The Brightest Witch and the Darkest House
by Belial666
Summary: What happens if the 'brightest witch of her age' is very different than Hermione? Would there be a golden trio? Would the fate of Britain be brighter, darker or unchanged? What is dark and what is evil and how much do choices matter? Slow break from canon initially, full break at book 3. Lots of magic, action, reasonably competent Harry and friends, PoV is potential dark witch.
1. The cat with the map

**The brightest witch of her age is a cunning, precocious girl with no respect for authority from a muggle family that is more than it seems. Will follow canon, if possible, with character interactions and choices altering the base plot. Dark magic will be delved into and explored. As few external plot elements (soul-bonds, additional prophesies, extended timetravel) as possible, as the story examines just how much the Potterverse could change when only one element is different. The story will also focus more than usual on the lessons and the magic itself; don't expect to see pairings before third, maybe fourth year.**

 **DISCLAIMER:**

 **Unfortunately, for my bank account's balance, I don't own Harry Potter. Fortunately, for millions of fans, Rowling does and knew what she was doing.**

 **...**

Number seven, Cromer Road, was a nice place even for the pricier London suburbs. The quiet Victorian house on a quiet street in one of the quieter areas of the city was not a place one would expect to find anything unusual or untoward. In this neighborhood older people lived their twilight years and richer people came to escape the bustle of downtown. There was a primary school down the street but it was neither very close nor did it have that many students. It was thought quiet enough and safe enough that one such student could skip up the street after school hours and into her home, without parental supervision. Or perhaps the tall boy in his late teens that followed on the younger girl's footsteps was considered enough of an escort; the cat didn't know but might soon find out. It was why she'd come here, after all. As she confirmed that the two children indeed entered the Victorian house at number seven, she patted her map once with a paw and Vanished it. She then jumped off the tree and strode towards the house as well.

 **...**

"That's ridiculous!" her brother Claude said with exasperation as he towered over her in all five and a half feet of his fourteen-year-old self. "There's no way the teachers would let something like this go on that far. You're just trying to weasel out of being grounded for fighting at school - again!"

Valerie rolled not-so-innocent blue eyes at that. Poor, poor, naive Claude. Just because she was trying to divert their parents' attention didn't mean she was lying. Her homework had been stolen and there was no way she'd let _that_ go by, doing nothing. Josh and his band of bullies had nicked several girls' schoolbags and hidden them in the boys' locker room. She'd warned him not to but he never listened; maybe his broken nose would be a better reminder from now on? If not, she'd have to get creative next time. A bit of fire, perhaps? She snorted, pulled an errant blonde lock behind her left ear and looked at her mother, trying to judge ratios; one third annoyed to two thirds worried, perhaps?

"Oh Dearie, you didn't cause trouble again, did you?" Mother asked with a small frown, disappointment evident. "I don't want you to spoil your perfect record. What would your father say?" _Good job not getting caught!,_ most probably. There weren't any teachers in the locker rooms. "And how will you make friends if you don't stop being so contrary? Sometimes I despair of you ever growing up..." Yes, because an ignoramus of Josh's caliber would have made a good friend? He wasn't even smart enough to know when he was being made fun of - which made reading the dictionary to find new words to do just that even funnier. "Oh what will I do with you young lady..." her mother mused. "Just go to your room. You're grounded until further notice."

Another point in favor of intelligence, Valerie considered. If you were a lazy person and liked your toys or the telly, they could be taken away. If you loved going out you could be grounded. If you liked your dresses and shoes and nail polish, an allowance could be witheld. But reading? Learning more than others did and getting better at important things? What parents would ever take that away? Not that Valerie disliked dresses or shoes. Books were just more...

Val's thoughts were interrupted by the doorbell, and her attention was immediately drawn to the peculiar visitor that was revealed when her mother opened the front door. A severe-looking, black-haired woman in an old-style dress stood there. Her appearance was curious. Unadorned glasses worn over piercing eyes, hair caught in a tight bun and an aura of respectability and zero tolerance for nonsense clashed with the flowing emerald cloth that must have been fashionable before the war -the Independence one- and the eerie... presence that declared something was seriously off to all that would hear. Not to mention the wooden stick caught in a strap of her belt. And what about her age? She appeared no older than fifty but her eyes and bearing reminded her more of grandma Elize rather than Mother.

"Good evening!" the strange visitor said. "My name is Minerva McGonagal. Is this the house of Owen and Melissa Campbell?"

 **...**

Minerva McGonagal, deputy headmistress in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, had had a very busy summer so far. A week of exams followed by a week of grading and the end of the school year then two more weeks of contacting established magical families whose children would reach the age of eleven before August the 31st, the official beginning of the next year. Tuition arrangements, scholarships, travel arrangements, meeting the occasional parent; not every magical household could afford to pay cash for seven years of Hogwarts education. And since the Ministry's and Board of Governors' joint decision in the mid 1800s to have all Hogwarts students travel to the school via train from platform Nine and Three Quarters in London, travel plans had become needlessly complicated. Only bureaucrats would set a single departure point for students from all over Great Britain when many magical households in the country -especially those in Scotland and Ireland- were closer to Hogwarts than London to begin with! But as June gave way to July, it was time for another task; contacting the muggleborn witches and wizards.

"I'm Melissa Campbell." the thirty-something blonde confirmed. "Can I help you?"

"I am deputy headmistress of a boarding school for children with special talents, Mrs. Campbell..." Minerva explained. "Your daughter's acheivements have recently come to our attention and I was sent to contact you in person. May I come in?" The names of all magical children in Great Britain were written on a book in the headmaster's office by Rowena Ravenclaw's own pen, one of Hogwarts' ancient founders, as they have been for over a millennium. But that was only the first step. Minerva had to get the names to the ministry of magic so the Trace charm could be put on them and their underage magic tracked and their location found. The official letter of acceptance to Hogwarts would automatically find them if sent by owl, yes, but muggle parents were unlikely to receive well any letter sent via owl - and then there was the breach to the Statute of Secrecy to consider. And thus a representative of the school had to be sent to explain the situation to families unfamiliar with magic.

Following Mrs Campbell inside, Minerva checked out the strange furniture styles and peculiar muggle devices filling the quiet Victorian house. Over several decades she'd seen many nonmagical households and had become acquainted with what muggles considered high-quality or expensive. And this house had it; not so much in the elaborate decorations and art favored by pureblood wizarding families (though those were in evidence too) but in the many esoteric devices muggles used to account for their lack of magic. Since the only one Minerva could recognize was the telly, she decided to focus on the reason for her visit. Graciously accepting the offered tea and making some small talk until everyone was sitting in the living room, the old witch carefully observed the girl. Of average height and build, the younger blonde displayed intelligence and curiosity by both paying attention to the discussion and surreptitiously observing what must be to her a very strange visitor. In Minerva's experience while many children age eleven were curious, most quickly found discussions between adults boring and discussions about school and academics somewhat unnerving. Perhaps the next few minutes would be calmer and more interesting that usual...

"Tell me Mrs Campbell," Minerva asked "have you ever noticed unusual events in your home?"

"Unusual how, professor?" the older blonde asked, perplexed. The girl and her brother on the other hand nailed Minerva with measuring stares.

"Things you couln't explain. Unusual lights or sounds, objects out of place, unlikely or impossible events." As Mrs Campbell's expression shifted into surprise and then worry, the deputy headmistress smiled while the children frowned in thought. Now this was unusual. Not unheard of - she'd encountered such a situation in Kent some two decades ago - but rare. It somewhat complicated things though, and would come as a shock to the poor mother. Sighing, the witch drew her wand and flicked it at the teapot, promptly transforming it into a gerbil. Mrs Campbell jumped off her seat in surprise, mouth agape. Her children didn't.

"Pay up Claude!" young Valerie said with glee after nearly a minute of silent scrutiny. "You and your comics were totally wrong!" Sullenly, the tall teenager passed a five pound note to his sister, one the old witch recognized from her many trips to Muggle Britain. The girl, almost dancing in her seat now, put the muggle money in her pocket and smiled at Minerva.

"Are you, like, a sorceress? Do all sorceresses wear old dresses? Do you all have magic wands? Are you really a professor? Can you move objects with your mind? Can you..."

"Breathe, child!" Minerva said, answering the young girl's smile with a thin one of her own. "And the correct term is 'witch'." Mrs Campbell collapsed into her chair and sighed heavily. After her initial shock, the strongest emotions evident in her sharp features for the past few minutes had been resignation and worry. She must have noticed the impossible results of her daughter's accidental magic then, but explained them away via common muggle 'logic' and largely forgotten them. Many parents of muggleborn witches and wizards had been like that but only in very few cases the children had correctly interpreted the events despite their parents' 'assurances' that magic did not exist. Fewer still had actively hidden further events from their parents, as Minerva was all but certain was the case here.

"Professor McGonagal, could I talk to you for a minute?" the older blonde requested. "In private?" At her nod, the thirty-something mother visibly recovered her composure and frowned at the children. "The professor and I have some matters to discuss, kids." she said seriously. "Why don't you go upstairs for a bit, maybe play with the gerbil?"

"But mom!"

"No buts, young lady!" the young mother admonished firmly. "I want a few minutes with your future professor. Grown-up talk." Thank Merlin she wasn't hysterical like many other muggle mothers before her when brought to a similar position. It would have made the whole situation that much more awkward, not to mention her task far more difficult. Good old Albus would hardly leave a budding muggleborn witch without education, especially not one smart enough to realize she was a witch in the first place, or one with that many instances of uncontrolled magic in her Trace record. And they did have a few important things to discuss, too. Tuition money probably wouldn't be an issue if the house was any indication. But where was the girl's father? Much as she prefered the direction the whole world had taken after Grindelwald's war, Minerva knew most of the Board of Governors still had firm patriarchal beliefs and would require she deal with the superior, in their worldview, of the two parents. It was to be expected with most of them being purebloods of course, not to mention over half the board members having exceeded the average wizarding life expectancy of a hundred and thirty seven years. Oh well. She'd try to stay away from discussing that kind of politics for her young charge's sake, no matter how many bitter memories she had of her own treatment in the past. Good old Albus was trying -had been doing so for near forty years- and with every muggleborn wizard and, especially, witch entering the wizarding world their goal got another step closer.

 **...**

"I still think you got lucky in our bet, you little brat!" Claude said mock-sullenly from his position atop her desk. Not that there was anywhere else to sit on in her room. Two full walls were taken up by the massive bookcase containing over twenty-eight hundred tomes, manuals, folios, magazines, academic journals and books of all kinds in general. Val thought for a moment and nodded. A book per day, on average, since she'd started reading on her own. She was smart, devouring books of all subjects at speeds her parents sometimes found alarming. Another wall was taken up by a small workshop where she worked both on standard art subjects and little 'tests' on things she'd read in the more interesting textbooks. But for several years now, she'd been growing further away from her child prodigy idols.

"Seriously, magic? What explanation is that? It doesn't actually explain anything!" Val rolled her eyes at her half-brother's indignation. It was a conclusion she'd been considering more and more with every test tube that ended the wrong color, every circuit that fizzled, every random result that was a little less random than it should be. It didn't happen every time. Not even one time out of a hundred. But when she was really frustrated, eager or angry? Something would go wrong, somewhere. It was times like these that stopped her from enjoying many of her textbooks.

"Because your comic books do?" she snorted and gestured with one hand and a book in the seventh row tilted and fell on Claude's head. It was the _'Mechanics of Motion_ ' manual; rather appropriate if she thought so herself. "Face it, big brother. No 'mutation' will ever allow anyone to do that. Besides, professor McGonagal changed a teapot into a gerbil. Do you even know how many scientific theories that ignores?" Probably all of them, she thought.

"She did invite you to a school for gifted children..." he countered weakly but then all attempts at defense failed dismally when the gerbil suddenly jumped on his lap and caused him to jump off the desk. Valeria laughed and a few moments later Claude followed.

"So, what do you think they're discussing?" he asked as he examined the gerbil then threw it at her.

"No idea. Maybe tuition, if witches still use normal currency." She let the gerbil chew on a lock of her dirty-blonde hair. It beat sacrificing a book or clothing and most things in her workshop were not fit for consumption. "Length of school year and the curicullum, too."

"Whoa sis, big words." Claude said in mock-surprise. "Try out some smaller ones, too, for your own good."

"Why?" Val said distractedly, considering the events earlier today. Did something odd happen when...

"Well, you do want to make some friends in witch academy, right?" her half-brother asked innocently. "Otherwise they might turn _you_ into a gerbil."

The discussion devolved into a pillow fight after that...

 **...**

Minerva considered the two children coming down the stairs at a run at their mothers' call. Her private discussion with Melissa Campbell had taken longer than expected and revealed many interesting facts, the least of which was the whereabouts of Owen Campbell, her husband. The pair had an interesting arrangement given the amount of time their respective jobs had them out of their home or even abroad. They frequently shifted the role of stay-at-home parent between them so at least one parent would be available as often as possible and hired nannies for the times it was not. The interesting part, from a pureblood perspective, was that Melissa Campbell was more often abroad due to her job as a negotiator in the muggle world and her husband stayed at home longer than she did. Too bad that the Statute of Secrecy and prior arrangements of the Hogwarts Board of Governors stipulated muggleborn wizards and witches be escorted by a professor and their closest adult male relative (if available) in their first foray into Diagon Alley and wizarding London in general. Many parents didn't accompany their children in that first visit at all, often requiring weeks or months to overcome their shock and accept the new world their children usually embraced outright with the cheerfulness of youth. Oh well. Young Valerie would hardly be the first newly minted witch she had personally escorted; there would be several others like her this year alone.

"Claude, Valeria, calm down and pay attention now!" the mother admonished seriously but needlessly. Despite their eagerness, the children were remarkably composed and attentive. "Valeria, professor McGonagal has offered to escort you to the magical side of London tomorrow to get supplies, equipment and textbooks for your new school. She'll also be introducing you to Wizarding Britain, as it is called, giving you some basic information about it. She also has something to give you now."

"Here, young lady." Minerva said, taking the folded and stamped parchment most wizarding letters used and handing it over to her young charge. "This is your acceptance letter to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Students from wizarding homes have it delivered to them via owl post but those in muggle homes -that is our name for nonwizards- have it handed to them by their wizard or witch escorts in most cases."

"Will... will I be getting a letter, professor?" the boy Claude asked, already half-guessing the answer.

"Unfortunately not, young man" Minerva said seriously. "You have no magical ability and would not fare well in our world. That is something that cannot be changed." she said, forestalling the second most often asked question by nonmagical siblings. "Not every child has the ability, not even in wizarding families where the ability is inherited. The best you can do is wish your sister good luck." The boy nodded in all seriousness, though his face was red with emotion.

"I have a question!" the girl suddenly stated. Minerva nodded and saw an earnest face locking blue eyes into her own brown.

"Are you now, or ever were, a kitty?"

"What?!" Minerva blurted, surprised. The girl's sharp features and pink lips -she shared those with her mother along with dirty blonde hair- stretched into a satisfied smile, the answer to her question evident in Minerva's own responce.

"Real cats can't read maps, professor." she said with a laugh before turning to her gobsmacked brother. "Pay up, comics-for-brains!"


	2. As bishops move

**Lots of research went into this chapter. Wandlore (explained and in the background), continuity nods, real prices of precious metals in the 1990s, dates, Diagon Alley numbers and so on and so forth. It should be noted that Diagon Alley numbers go well past 300 but the exact number of permanent shops, government buidlings, other establishments and private residences are not known, let alone temporary vendor stalls. I arbitrarily selected some prime numbers for them that were close enough - a conservative estimate of the Alley's size makes it about a mile long so they should fit. We never get enough of Diagon Alley in the books IMHO, mainly because Harry is not the best educated, detail-oriented person, so I tried to have it described through the eyes of someone that was less people-oriented and more, well, self-serving. Finally, I always saw Ollivander as quite insightful and highly perceptive but, like many traditional older wizards, somewhat lacking in common sense. For those wishing for more interaction with canon faces, it is soon coming up. And yes, Valeria's House is rather obvious, no matter what McGonagall believes.**

 **Disclaimer: However awesome Harry Potter might be, it belongs to J. Rowling. I'm just trying to build on said awesome pro bono for everyone's benefit.**

 **...**

Valeria's first impression of 'Wizarding Britain' begun in a pub. And an old, shady one at that; little in the way of lights beyond a single fireplace, all-wooden walls and floors blackened by age, tables and chairs a bit crooked from who-knew-how-many decades of bearing customers and their dishes, a barman bald, lined and crooked with age. And the customers? All wore robes of dark colors and many concealed their face. At least one of them drank something Valeria could have sworn was blood, while another's eyes glowed an eerie green under her hood. It was strange how that particular literature trope was proving true... unless it wasn't just a trope, she thought in a flash of insight.

"Professor, just how old is this pub?" she asked quietly as several people, the aging barman included, respectfully greeted the deputy headmistress with a nod, a waving hand or a word or two.

"The Leaky Cauldron?" her escort thought for a moment. "It was built by Daisy Dodderidge in 1500, to serve as a gateway between muggle London and Diagon Alley. So it's even older than it looks." she said with the barest hint of a smile on her forbidding expression. That figured. If most real witches and wizards in Britain had been going through that pub for _five hundred years,_ the possibility of a rumor linking pubs to the supernatural not appearing was practically zero, no matter the safety and secrecy measures involved. Someone, somewhere, had slipped and now Claude's 5th level wizard met his elf and fighter buddies in a tavern before their every foray into orc-slaying.

Going through the back door, professor and student entered an all-but empty area surrounded by tall brick walls and a dustbin for its sole occupant or decoration. Drawing her wand, the deputy headmistress tapped a brick seemingly at random and suddenly the bricks in the wall started to shift, rotate and dance around. A small gap appeared among them and quickly grew into an archway as more and more bricks folded into each other while others repositioned themselves into a small arch. And then the impossible craziness that was Diagon Alley was finally revealed.

 **...**

Valeria had been struck speechless, her jaw making a credible effort of reaching the floor. Her mind scrambled to find words to describe the spectacle before her but even a kid as smart as she was given pause by the awesomely impossible made manifest. Her escort, quite experienced with the usual reaction of her young charges, gave her a few moments. The young witch struck her as someone too logical and reserved to have much fun and however smart she may be, she was still a child; she needed such moments to grow up into a balanced young woman.

"Oh my! How are these tilted buildings even standing up? The Leaning Tower has nothing on them; they're practically sideways! And look at those quills writing on their own! Oh, are those broomsticks? Kind of cliche but they're flying! And the books. Talking books, dancing books, self-cross-referencing books, fanged books, invisible books - wait, how would you even read those?! And love potions? Are those legal? I can't wait to..."

"Breathe, miss Campbell." professor McGonagal admonished with a chuckle. "There are three hundred and thirteen shoppes and permanent establishments in Diagon Alley, and up to seven hundred and thirty-three stalls and vendors of various kinds between them at any given time. Don't try to take in everything at once; it's rather impossible. We'll be visiting the essential establishments to cover your school supplies and afterwards you'll be allowed a couple of hours to browse if you so wish."

Oh she wished - and how! As the professor walked her up the cobbled, crazily angled street, she tried to make up a mental map of the alley and memorize to position of every major wizarding shop so as to enhance the efficiency of the browsing to follow, getting the maximum number of purchases with a minimum of fuss. It was a skill Mother had positively mastered during both her trips abroad and forays into London's commercial zones and had been passing on to the next generation of the family. Claude was rather hopeless at it but Valeria liked to think she had a firm grasp of the basics and would soon foray into more advanced techniques.

Bookstores, apothecaries, ingredient suppliers, establishments providing enchanted items of various uses, animal vendors, restaurants and pubs, small businesses with specialty items and public and government buildings. As culture shock slowly faded, Valerie's mind got to work under her cheerfulness. However weirdly impossible some of the sights were and however odd the exact merchandise might be, Diagon Alley proved to be at least as efficient and functional a place as London's best markets. The restaurants, pubs and other food vendors evenly spaced across its length ensured weary customers could be provided with both rest and fuel without needing to interrupt their acquisition campaign for long. The bookstores were divided nicely by their potential customers' needs; Flourish and Blotts catered mostly to students and their teachers, Whizz Hard Books provided books of all types and audiences from fiction to sports, and Obscurus Books was a specialty store full of encyclopaedias, academic books and treatises in arcane subjects. Potions vendors were strategically positioned next to or near their ingredient suppliers and establishments selling enchanted devices and equipment from simple household items to magical transportation that, presumably, almost everyone would want were neatly spaced out to prevent customer traffic from becoming congested in the relatively narrow street. But most telling of all, important buildings like the offices for the larger wizarding newspapers and the wizarding bank were at the other end of Diagon Alley from the Leaky Cauldron and thus the single physical entrance. While this would somewhat delay those that only had important business and were not there to shop, it ensured that every single visitor would be seeing anything new and exciting before going to the bank to make withdrawals and would then buy everything afterwards. No need for advertisements, intrusive or otherwise, and with them being wizards and witches, Valeria suspected anyone in a real hurry would have means other than walking to get where they needed to be. After all, if they could make simple broomsticks _fly_...

 **...**

Their arrival at Gringotts heralded the second, if milder, culture shock for Valeria. The marble-walled, brass-adorned Wizarding Bank was not the cause. Who guarded and ran it on the other hand...

"Is that a goblin!?" the young witch exclaimed, pointing at the short, expensively dressed hominid with the pointy ears, large head, greyish skin, claws, fangs and expensive gold decorations and jewelry.

"Indeed." Professor McGonagal replied with a frown. "Where have you seen goblins before miss Campbell, if I may ask?"

"Oh, it's my first time." Valeria replied, thinking of yet another apparent coincidence. "It is just that many non-magical fantasy novels and some board games have goblins in them. Fairly accurate in their portrayal too, all things considered."

"I see..." the professor said. "Well, it must be said miss Campbell that goblins are quite smart, highly organized, very elitist and highly territorial. Their skills with earth and metal, magical or otherwise, are considerable. It is for those reasons they run the wizarding bank, should be respected and never underestimated. Do you understand?" Valeria certainly did. She'd read the Hobbit after all and unlike certain wizards she had neither a magic sword nor could she throw lightning yet; one misstep in dealing with goblins and it would probably be the cooking pot for her. As the professor led her into the admittedly impressive marble and brass atrium where dozens of goblins led witches and wizards deeper into the bank, measured stacks of bronze, silver and golden currency and examined precious stones of all kinds, she marveled that she now had an answer to one of science's biggest questions; humans were not alone! There were nonhuman intelligent species not out there but secretly sharing the planet with them. Valeria sighed - she now owed Claude twenty pounds for that bet.

"Good morning" the deputy headmistress said to the goblin banker as soon as it was their turn. "I am professor Minerva McGonagal of Hogwarts, escorting miss Campbell, a first-year muggleborn student. We're here to exchange muggle money for wizarding currency."

"I see" the goblin rasped. "If miss Campbell would provide the muggle currency to be counted and checked?" Valeria readily retrieved her purse and handed over the two stacks of notes her mother had provided as well as her own savings. Despite the lack of automated or electronic aides, the goblin checked and counted the notes so fast they seemed to disappear and then begun dispensing far more impressive stacks of tiny bronze slips, shining silver coins and heavy gold discs bigger than a pound. "Here" the goblin pushed the stacks towards her gruffly even as the professor's eyes widened.

"Miss Campbell, that is a significant sum of money. As I explained to your mother tuition fees could be handled directly through the bank. Did she choose to make the exchange separately after all?"

"No, professor." Valeria said as she struggled to fit the coins into her bag since there was no way they'd fit only in her purse. Impressive though they might be, wizarding money took up a lot of space, which struck her as odd, for some reason. "Since she'd need to be escorted herself to get into Diagon Alley if she later needed to, she chose to have me exchange a year's worth of my spending needs and allowance all at once. Plus, I decided to exchange all my savings too as Hogwarts is a boarding school where I'll spend nearly ten months out of every year for the immediate future."

"I see..." the professor mused. "I feel I must remind you, young lady, that this kind of money is a considerable responsibility for one so young."

"Don't worry professor. Mother thought so too - there's only so much of what she gave me I'm allowed to spend today." Which was why she'd brought all her savings with her, after all. Not that that point would be lost on the professor, or her mother for that matter. But it was her money, saved over a long time to be used in case of emergency. And if any situation ever qualified as a major emergency, learning of the existence of an entire different world of magic certainly did.

"Be that as it may, there will be no... frivolous purchases today, young lady" professor McGonagal stated unequivocally, her mouth twisting distastefully. "I will make sure your mother is aware of the existence of things such as fanged frisbies, dungbombs and perpetual grafitti markers before you're allowed free rein to wreack havoc in the most prestigious wizarding school in Europe like some other miscreants I could mention."

Valeria huffed in mock irritation as they moved back to the bank's waiting area so other customers could take their turn. Why would she waste her cash in toys when there were so many awesome and useful things to buy? She already had a plan and it was perfect. The only thing missing was...

"Now pay close attention as I explain wizarding currency. Many muggleborn make mistakes their first time but while most vendors in Diagon Alley are honest, you can't afford to make one with the kind of money you're carrying." Yes, that. She paid attention as the professor explained how knuts, sickles and galleons worked, mentally tallying prices she'd glimpsed on her way here and calculating what she coul buy. It was then that the previous oddness of the money struck her again among a few other things that didn't add up. She frowned at the professor that was looking at her expectantly to confirm she understood, apparently with not even a hint something was off.

"That can't be right, professor. One moment please..." she strode back to the goblin banker, confused.

"Excuse me. I have a couple questions on wizarding currency" she started politely. "May I have a few minutes of your time?"

"Speak." the goblin banker said brusquely, giving opinion on neither her querry nor her demeanor.

"How is it that one galleon equals seventeen sickles? The galleon coin is larger than the sickle and global gold-silver balances are at an all-times high, with gold being eighty-seven times more expensive than silver!" Father had certainly complained long enough about it the past year. More than one of his deals had failed due to it.

"Young lady, the wizarding economy is not linked to the muggle one." the goblin stated evenly. It didn't escape Valeria's notice that his eyebrows were both raised in surprise and that his responce was more polite and more extensive than any previous one to herself or other customers. "Price fluctuation in the muggle economy does not affect us." He snorted then. "As if we'd follow the same unsustainable economic practices as the muggle world." That hardly addressed the other problem.

"But, many prices don't make sense." Explanation or no, she was still confused. "That 'Daily Prophet' paper costs a knut. If my tally is correct, a knut equals to about a penny. A pint of beer in a London pub would cost, like, fifty times that much. And this galleon coin, it equals five pounds? Gold should be hundreds of times more expensive."

"Ah, but there are some points you're missing!" the goblin said, apparently excited to be asked such questions. "Muggle prices reflect difficulty in production, price of materials, supply and demand, availability, repeated taxation nearing four-fifths of the final value and dozens of other factors. Wizarding prices on the other hand reflect the fact that a wizard can conjure many mundane items with a gesture. Things that can't be conjured can be easily found and processed by magic and when found they can be multiplied. The only things with high prices are either magical, and thus need real work to make, or wizards don't know how to make at all, which means mostly muggle items as well as anything specifically enchanted not to be copiable - such as out currency."

When put like this, things made much more sense. But despite the goblins' assurances, now that Valeria had left Grinngots behind she was beginning to wonder whether the banker had given her the true explanation or a logical and highly plausible lie.

 **...**

" _Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C._ "

The strapline didn't exactly make Valeria comfortable. Ollivanders' was veritably ancient. Bloody hell, the business was a thousand years older than even the Church! Professor McGonagal had suggested the wandmaker and she'd readily agreed; nearly a hundred generations in the craft would certainly make him and his family experienced enough. Now that she could see the condition of the shop though, she wasn't so certain.

"Professor, are you sure about this?" she asked, staring at the single wand on display upon a pillow so worn and faded with age as to be near unrecognizable.

"Things are rarely as they appear to be, miss Campbell..." her escort admonished "...especially where wizards and our predilection for theatricality are concerned. In any case, the current owner has been a well-respected wandmaker for well over sixty years." And with that, ignoring the layer of dust covering much of the shop's interior, she pushed open the entrance and led the younger witch inside. The interior looked like a cross between an old, forgotten library and a weird shoe shop. Long, narrow boxes leaned row after row and column after column against the walls, much like aging tomes in a bookcase. There was a bare, wooden counter separating the shop's space in two, with a narrow door behind it leading into a second, darker room - probably some sort of warehouse. A wheeled staircase set in a rail currently occupied one corner but otherwise the room was empty. Where was...?

"Minerva McGonagal. Fir, nine and a half inches, dragon heartstring core, stiff" an aged voice greeted them eerily. Its owner, a lined grey-haired man in his late sixties or early seventies, had appeared behind the pair of visiting witches apparently from thin air and was now observing them unblinkingly with a pair of large milky-blue eyes. Remembering the professor's words Valeria reestimated the man's age upwards significantly; however young one might look, they coul hardly be a well-respected wandmaker at age ten! "One of mine, wasn't it? I remember it well and I stand by what I told you back then; one of the best I ever saw for Transfiguration."

"Oh good morning, Garrick." Minerva McGonagal greeted the man with familiarity. After decades of escorting muggleborns to his workshop she was hardly surprised by his peculiarities. "Young miss Campbell here is in need for a wand for the first time and naturally, I brought her to you."

"Indeed!" the odd man said, and looking down from his considerable height stared right into Valeria's eyes. "Well then, come here, don't be timid. Which will be your wand arm, Valeria Campbell?"

"I am left-handed" she said distractedly. A tape with no markings she could read was taking measures of her on its own accord and not just those of her left arm either; it roamed all over her body seemingly at random, and was rapidly becoming rather annoying.

"Could you take your gloves off for a moment?" he asked and Valerie flinched. Mother and Claude had long since stopped asking and with nobody else caring about them before, she'd almost forgotten she wore a pair. Almost. Just as she'd almost forgotten the reason why.

"Is it really necessary?" she asked hesitantly for the first time. "I'd rather not."

"I see..." Ollivander said. For a moment his milky-blue stare seemed to pierce her but was replaced by his eerie mirth so fast she could almost believe she'd imagined it. Almost. "Well try this wand then, it should do; vine and dragon heartstring, ten and three-quarter inches." Valeria took hold of the elaborately carved piece of wood and stared at it. When nothing happened, she frowned and gave it a flick. It was a wand, after all. And yet it felt just like a normal piece of wood to her.

"Curious" the aging wizard whispered, already opening another box. "Maple and Phoenix feather, seven inches, quite whippy. Try it, miss." Valeria did but the wood felt... stale to her, dry. And it did seem rather small. Ollivander must have agreed because he snatched it from her hand and replaced it with one made of blackthorn, ten inches long, with a unicorn hair core. This time the wood felt good in her hand but there was no obviously magical responce when she flicked it. The wandmaker shook his head and brought more boxes from their shelves for her to try.

"Why are there so many different wand sizes and woods?" she asked curiously, even as she tried a ten-inch hawthorn one that felt too soft and pliable as she swished it around.

"Because there are so very many different wizards and witches, young lady" he said, opening some more boxes while putting those wands she'd already tried away. "The wand chooses the wizard, not the other way around. While there are, I believe, only three superior wand cores one can use in wandmaking, there are dozens of possible different woods and just as many sizes. In their case it is not a matter of superiority; even powerful combinations will not work well if they don't fit their wielder."

Professor McGonagal preferred to remain silent. It was good her young charge was inquisitive; Garrick Ollivander didn't often share these little bits of wandlore with everyone. Alas, this was more proof the bright young witch was destined for Ravenclaw, not her own House of Gryffindor. She wasn't especially timid but she was far more cautious and perceptive. Oh well. Filius would be delighted to have her as a student and she would never begrudge anyone the House best suited for them. Even if she spent so much of her day standing and seeing them try wand after wand to no effect.

"Hard customer, eh?" the aging wandmaker chuckled. "Oh, don't worry, we can outfit you. We'll just have to look a bit... further." Valeria didn't know what the old man meant but she was worried again. Evidence so far had shown Ollivander to be odd at best and she got the feeling this whole process was his own little experiment on every buyer's expense. Remembering how her own far simpler experiments often melted or blew up when she used magic, she audibly gulped.

"If the wand chooses the wizard, how come wands are made before you ever meet and measure each customer?" she asked apprehensively.

"The answer to that question, my dear, you'll find if you take seventh year Arithmancy. Now try this one." He passed a too-straight, dark brown wand her way. "English oak, twelve inches, unicorn feather. Unyielding." She gave it a flick - or rather tried. It felt as if the wand was made of lead and stuck in glue to boot.

"No, it won't do. Humor me young lady, try this one? Eleven inches, holly and phoenix feather, nice and supple." Valeria did and immediately frowned in distaste. The wood felt too... oily sweet was the only description that came to mind. And the wand was uncomfortably warm, too. She gave it a flick anyway and recoiled as if punched to the gut. The old man -blast his amused smile- now stood behind a counter that had snapped in two, the wood shredded. Served him right; he'd probably given her this one on purpose. Even professor McGonagal couldn't hold back a small smile this time.

"At least it was the strongest reaction yet" he said back to her scowl. "I think we're getting somewhere. Cherry and dragon heartstring, thirteen and a half inches, thick but pliable. Give it a flick." The younger witch glared at the wandmaker. If he was pulling her leg again... Well his loss, she thought as she widely flicked the latest tryout in his direction. If anything nasty came out, let it happen to him.

The reaction was immediate as it was impressive; a torrent of red-white sparks, each an inch-long tongue of flame, hurled themselves at the aging wandmaker. "Garrick!" McGonagal exclaimed, then flicked her own wand to produce a jet of cool, clear water. The tiny flames attempting to burn their way through the counter, the floor and mr Ollivander's own robes sizzled and resolutely pursued their attack. It took two more jets to snuff them out completely and by then Valeria had retreated to the other side of the small shop and was breathing heavily. The whole thing seemed to have lasted minutes but Valera knew that was the adrenaline speaking. Three seconds, maybe four, and numerous inch-deep holes had already been burned all over the place. Heart beating a mile a minute, the young witch gaped at the still hale and smirking wandmaker.

"Goodness, that was exciting. I daresay I'm in need of better protective robes." He laughed, the bloody bastard, and fondly patted her over the head. Professor McGonagal appeared as gobsmacked with the whole incident as Valeria felt. "It seems we've found a wand for you young lady. As long as you retain exceptional self control and strength of mind you should do great things with it. And if not..." He shrugged, though it seemed to her that he'd subtly pointed at the scorched floor as he did it.

The young witch, now the proud and rather alarmed owner of a new wand, gulped and hastily exited the wandmaker's establishment.

 **...**

"Shop therapy!" she gasped as she dragged the deputy headmistress away from danger. "In dire need of it. Accept no substitutes when dealing with crazies!"

"Quite." Professor McGonagal said noncommitally. She had no idea why Garrick Olivander of all people would intimidate such a bright young witch but she'd long ago learned to follow the intuition of older, more learned wizards. If her decades in Albus Dumbledore's confidence had not taught her she posessed very little in the way of the Inner Eye or even simple insight, her unreliable judgement of her own former students during the last War would certainly have. She worried for the girl of course and would mention the incident to Dumbledore, but what had the old wandmaker seen to make him push her so? He was as perceptive as the Headmaster at times.

"Come on professor, let's go shopping. I saw some very interesting bottomless purses a few numbers down." The Head of Gryffindoor sighed with exasperation at the energy of youth and took out her wand. Murmuring some fairly complicated incantations, she tapped the young blonde's head thrice then gave her a simple bracelet to strap on her wrist.

"Miss Campbell, you're now under several tracking, protection and alarm spells so I can observe you and ensure your safety from afar. The bracelet is the emergency portkey we give to muggleborns their first day in Diagon Alley. It is a case of better safe than sorry and will instantly transport you to safety in case of danger." She nodded towards the crooked street extending before them. "With these on you, you will be safe in any place within the alley itself and most places beyond. Normally I would escort you all the way but a minor emergency has turned up with the school owls. For some reason the Headmaster wants some special owl treats and avian rejuvenation elixir this summer so I'll be in the Eeylops Owl Emporium for the next couple of hours. This should be adequate time for you to browse."

Apparently the deputy headmistress had little experience with preteen girl shopping sprees in modern-day Britain. No way were 'a couple of hours' nearly enough. At least she'd had over an hour to mentally prepare and organize for maximum efficiency. For a moment Valeria considered spending all her time on her own interests and 'forgetting' she school essentials; it wasn't as if the professor would let her leave without buying them even if they ran late. But she also wanted to make a good first impression, so angering the professor by wasting her time just wouldn't do.

First things first. She scrambled for 'TerrorTours', the travel agency and exploration outfit in 59 Diagon. No, she didn't want a trip to Haiti to sightsee among free-range inferi (whatever those were), thank you very much. But she did want one of the nifty wizarding trunks with the space-extending, weight-saving enchantments. The tiny tents that could fit an entire house Tardis-style were impressive but not very secure. In the end, she burned through nearly half her alloted cash for a magically secure trunk with four locks. Depending on which one you opened a different interior chamber appeared, each one the size of a small room. The trunk itself was studded dragonhide with spell-repellent varnish over ironwood, enchanted burn-proof and nigh unbreakable. Terribly expensive, but something that should last for her entire carreer in Hogwarts and offer hundreds of times more space than a mundane trunk of the same size. The featherweight enchantments on it didn't hurt either.

Next it was Flourish and Blotts. There she bought all the base coursebooks for the current Hogwarts curicculum, all forty one of them, not just those for the first years. This depleted her remaining money considerably but again it was a purchase that would be useful through her entire carreer; she merely did it ahead of time. She had two months till the school year begun and she planned to have read as much about her new school as possible. Kids from wizarding families would have had a decade to get familiar with magic; just thinking how far behind them she must be gave her stomach cramps. Valeria Campbell absolutely refused to be last in her class due to little things like accidents of birth and the structure of wizarding Britain. Packing a couple more books for light reading, she thought of her dwindling funds and sighed. Hopefully the school itself woul have an extensive library.

She would not need a broomstick this year and pets were not her thing. Getting a couple sets of medium-quality robes to save money, she opted for an extended potions kit and extra ingredients. She'd always liked chemistry even if it occasionally failed on her; maybe witches' brews would be more her speed. Last but not least she got a self-inking quill with both dictation and amanuensis capability. Speaking her homework rather than writing it would save a lot of time, as would automatic note-taking and text-copying. Not to mention all the ink blots and potential accidents avoided for not having to carry an open inkwell.

With only minutes left, she scrambled to get as many order catalogs as she could get her hands onto...

 **...**


	3. Of trains and families

**I'm excited about this one. First chapter where I get to make changes to the plot as characters interact with the new girl. Also showing a bit more of Valeria's strengths and flaws, playing around with some magic and introducing politics. Plus, different narrator bias exploring some characters under a new light. Since Valeria is so different than Harry Potter, we'll be seeing that one a lot. Regarding the underage magic issue, the original Hermione had also tried some simple spells before coming to Hogwarts and Harry learned of the 'no-underage-magic' rule as he was leaving school at the end of first year. Apparently the ministry doesn't think someone would know how to cast spells before their first year. Of course, there doesn't seem to be any restriction (or at least detection of) potions and enchanted items given the Weasleys using the flying car to save Harry and not being detected, and the twins using a ton-tongue-toffee on Dudley two years later.**

 **Disclaimer: Harry Potter is awesome because it was written by J. Rowling. If I had done it instead, you'd probably get something cliche and mediocre.**

 **...**

The summer days passed quickly in the Campbell house, if not exactly quietly or peacefully. Owen Campbell was a busy man. He handled significant assets for important or highly private individuals that did not often trust the usual channels for their business. He had to travel often, sometimes without warning. Still, he had managed to return just in time for his daughter's birthday in mid-August, only to have his entire world turned upside-down overnight. He liked to think he was a practical man, as his business deals often required of him, hardly having any religious leanings at all and now his little princess was a witch! How the bloody hell was that even possible? Magic didn't... wasn't... it was a fairytale for goodness' sake! On the other hand, it was hard to argue with reality, especially when his beloved daughter waved that thick wooden stick of hers and lifted a teapot halfway to the ceiling.

In the end, the whole family sat in the living room together and passed on many pertinent information. Yes, magic existed. No, it had nothing to do with religion; it was mostly inherited, except for the rare cases where a witch or wizard was born in a non-magical family. Little Valeria was one such case. That was how she could do several impossible things, especially when she waved around that stick of hers. Which was called a 'wand' by the way. And because she had the gift, a position in a prestigious school of magic awaited her. Nevermind the fact her parents or the world at large had never heard of such a school before. It was... unnerving to be so woefully ignorant of an entire society that lived next to -even within- yours. And the warning that he could never share that information lest rob-wearing men-in-black erase his memory? Simply infuriating! But maybe... maybe it was for the best. His little princess had admitted to being the cause of several peculiar events over the past few years, as well as others she'd kept secret. If it would help prevent more... bloody hell, even after seven years the memory haunted him.

He went to bed late and didn't sleep well. The next morning his sour mood was dispelled when his little princess gave him a purse. A tiny thing of black leather that would fit in his pocket and would barely fit the keys to the house and two offices. To his amazement and disbelief, a simple password made the bottom vanish to reveal a hidden space the size of a briefcase that couldn't possibly exist inside the tiny purse... but did anyway. After his daughter assured him such things were "cheap and common daddy, don't worry" he went to bed that night feeling much better. In fact, he was excited. His little girl might see it as a small magic toy to give a father unduly worried about her, hardly significant compared to what other wonders she must have seen. But for Owen Campbell it could be far more.

 **...**

"Bloody hell sis, are you daft?" Claude whispered urgently as he closed the door behind him. "Your room has several trees' worth of wood and twice as much kindling and you light a fire in here!?"

"Shhh! Do you want Mother catching wind of this?" Valeria said then added another slug. That made four. She moved the small pewter pot to the left end of her trunk and snuffed out the makeshift fire on the right. As an improvised workshop desk, the fireproof, magically protected trunk was perfect.

"Of course I want Mother to know if my sister's bonkers now!" He eyed her suspiciously. "You aren't about to cackle madly and turn me into a gerbil, are you?"

"Don't be absurd Claude..." she said distractedly as she added the quills and started stirring slowly "...human transfiguration is 7th year material."

"Riiight. I'm gonna leave now. Find a safe place far away." He grumbled. "Maybe Antarctica..."

"That won't save you if your distraction ruins this potion..." the young witch said as she counted the fifth slow stir. Pink smoke rose from the pot and she sighed in relief. It was ready. Now the only thing left was...

"Why'd you want me here anyway?" Claude asked from his usual place atop her normal desk. "You know I can't do the magic thingie."

"Thingie?" a thick, dirty blone eyebrow rose in question. Fashionable eyebrows were way thinner but Valerie's summer time was too precious to waste. Besides, sooner or later she'd learn how to do it quicky and painlessly with magic. "Brother dear, using the right terminology makes you look smarter, you know that."

"And too many big words make you look like you're trying too hard." His expression turned thoughtful. "Or just silly. I haven't decided yet."

"Prat!" She threw a pillow at him, which he easily caught. "Anyways, I wanted you here because you have a problem. And so do I."

"Really?" That was Claude, all right. Never use proper speech when far less would do.

"Oh yes. Your rather serious condition often leads to anxiety, reduced self-esteem and in extreme cases, depression or suicidal thoughts."

"Wait, what?"

"It is a long-term, often cure-resistant disease that can leave permanent scarring." She said carefully and with a serious, worried tone. She'd read up on it and practiced, just for this occasion. "Symptoms include comedones and seborrhoeic dermatitis..."

"What the hell are you talking about?" He'd jumped off the desk, voice rising in pitch, only to loom over her half-threatening and half-pleading. Yes, because he was so very intimidating when he did that. Not! Honestly, sometimes he was just so easy.

"I'm talking about acne, of course!" she snorted. She'd tried for innocent surprise but failed dismally. "What did you think I was talking about?"

"Why you little...!" He jumped after her, hunting her all over the room as they both ran, she laughing gleefully while he was gnashing his teeth. Five minutes later they both collapsed on the bed, flushed and out of breath. Halfway through it all, he'd started laughing as well and it made her happier. Over the past month and a half she'd often feared he'd grow jealous of her magic like the kids in class were jealous of her being so smart. Maybe it wouldn't happen after all.

"OK, I admit it. Acne is a problem." He said when they'd caught their breath. He was frowning now, one hand reaching to idly scratch at the offending symptoms before he let it fall to his side. "What's yours?"

"You know how I've tried a few simple spells, right?" Better to start slowly or he'd balk.

"Yeah, what's up with that?" He looked suspiciously at the potion-filled pot. Luckily they hadn't spilled any during their five-minute pursuit. "Aren't you supposed to learn that stuff over in that magic school of yours? As in, not here?"

"There's no way kids from magical families haven't tried at least some magic already!" she huffed. "I refuse to be last in anything. Besides if I learn things before they come up in class, I can show off and get better marks. All it takes is reading a bit ahead."

"Intentionally being teacher's pet?" he laughed. "Only you, sis. So." He sat up and turned serious again. "What do you want my help with?"

"Well... most spells only work on the right kind of target." She sighed forlornly. "And professor McGonagal's gerbil turned back into a teapot last week. Poor thing... it was so cute."

"No it wasn't. Especially when you turned it bright pink with lime green spots." He scowled and took a step back. "Wait a minute! You want me as a... a guinea pig!" he accused. "Oh no! There's no way you're turning me pink anything!"

"Don't be so melodramatic. I've learned the color-changing charm already. The other things I want to try aren't nearly so bad."

"Says you!" He thought about it for a moment. "How are you going to help with my problem? Ritually exorcise my acne or something?"

"Not really." She pointed at the pot still cooling on her trunk. "Actually, the boil cure potion would work better than that. It wouldn't vanish your nose for one."

"Wait, wait, wait. This thing you, a girl barely eleven, cooked in a pot over a makeshift fire in under an hour... it really cures acne?"

"Yes, I'm disappointed too" she replied nonchalantly. "We don't brew the cure for the common cold until third year." And that was the end of Claude's resistance.

 **...**

"Are you sure you don't want to come?" It was morning on September the 1st and Charing Cross station was packed. Thousands of passengers milled about, only focused on their comings and goings. People aside, the place was a chaos of purses, packs, briefcases and trunks and the few brave employees trying to make sense of it all. But not everyone was there to take the train that day - at least not the muggle train. Valeria had seen several small groups oddly dressed in everything from elaborate Victorian attire to simple robes that might have been fashionable during the War. The first Persian War, that was. Every such group had three distinctive features; they all seemed to be families escorting one or more kids between the ages of eleven and seventeen, at least one group member had a wand, and none of the other travelers or employees seemed to notice them unless they specifically drew attention or someone pointed them out. Valeria suspected some sort of magic was at work. Otherwise, not only the hundreds of wizarding families that came here every year would have long since been noticed but there would also be countless images of them taken by the security cameras.

"This is your world, princess." Father said fondly. "I wouldn't know what to do in there. I'd probably embarass myself. Or, as your brother often worries, someone might turn me into a gerbil." The whole family laughed at that. They'd all come to see her off and she was very grateful, if a bit sad that she wouldn't be seeing them for many months.

"Remember dear, it's still a school" mother comforted her. "Read and work hard as you always do and you'll do well, however weird it may be."

"I'll be fine mother!" she agreed. Magic was so very exciting to learn, and impressively useful. Perhaps... perhaps she'd finally found a subject she could both enjoy and be good in. Figured it'd taken discovering a whole new world for that to happen.

"Try not to blow anything up, brat." Claude joked. "Less Oppenheimer and more Merlin, OK?" Her whole family joined into a fierce group hug. A minute later Valeria Campbell brushed away a few tears with the back of one sleeve, lifted her magically featherlight trunk, vanished into the wall between platforms nine and ten, and marched into the wizarding world on her own for the first time.

 **...**

"Oh I'm sorry, miss. I didn't see you." Valeria rolled her eyes at the short, chubby, blond boy who'd almost knocked her over and actually toppled himself. Of course he hadn't seen her; he'd been looking at the floor. Not that she was entirely blameless; she'd been trying to find a compartment for several minutes now but the whole train was packed. What was more, most of the older kids had their own friends, groups and little cliques. And with her so much younger than them and a newcomer to boot, they would have little reason to talk. At least the compartments here near the end of the train didn't look so full.

"No harm done!" she said cheerfully. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision but seeing the boy's lack of confidence and young age reminded her of Claude's advice on making friends. "My name's Valeria, by the way" she said, helping him to his feet.

"Oh, err... hi." His face went a bit red from embarassment. "I'm Neville. Neville Longbottom."

"Nice to meet you Neville." She shifted her trunk out of the way. Featherlight or not, it took up a lot of space in the narrow corridor. She really needed to find a compartment, if only to stash it. "Were you looking for something?"

"Eh?"

"You were looking at the floor. Not to mention you seemed to be in a hurry."

"Oh, it was nothing..." Valeria doubted that but didn't interrupt. "It's my toad, Trevor. I..." He actually begun to sweat a bit. She couldn't be sure yet but Neville seemed to have a bit of a self-esteem issue. "I kinda lost him..." he visibly deflated as he said that.

"Tell you what, Neville." She picked up her truck determinedly. "You help me find a compartment to leave this and I'll help you with Trevor, OK?"

Valeria had never been on a train before but she was rapidly forming the opinion that trains were obvious, noisy, overbooked and full of far too many rude and/or unhelpful brats. She blamed it on the color; red was known to attract short-tempered but brainless types of cattle, after all. Seriously, couldn't these people stop playing with their giant tarantulas or nose-biting-teacups or color-shifting nail polish for half a bloody minute and help? They'd been through several train cars so far and with each biting comment or idle dismissal she grew angrier while Neville went paler and more teary-eyed.

"Hey you two" she greeted the two boys positively gorging themselves in sweets in the upteenth compartment she and Neville had checked since morning. "Has either of you seen a frog? Neville lost his not long ago."

"Nope, sorry mate. Can't saw we have." The tall redhead said rudely -she was _not_ his mate- as he bit off the head of an animated frog made of chocolate. Behind her, Neville gasped. At that moment Valeria's rage spiked at the boy's stupidity and scrambled for something witty yet cutting to hurl back to his face. Seeing he had his wand out and remembering what kind of boys could be so casually rude and stupidly insensitive, her eyes gleamed dangerously. When Claude saw that expression on her he ran for the hills but this bloke was apparently oblivious. Even better.

"Oh, you're doing magic?" She crossed her arms and looked at him expectantly. "Let's see it then." Mr Dimwit Rudeginger did not fail to deliver. And in a way that made him look both pompous and silly, too.

" _Sunshine, daisies,  
butter mellow,  
turn this stupid,  
fat rat yellow._"

Naturally, his fat, lazy rat remained as pale grey as ever. As if that childish rhyme could ever be a real spell. "Here" she said smugly. "Allow me. I've already tried some simple spells and they all worked." She took out her long, thick cherry wand and pointed it at the rat. _"Colovaria!"_

Nothing happened at all! She, Neville, the rude redhead and his too-thin bespectacled friend stared at it for a second or two and then Dimwit Rudeginger started laughing. Laughing at her! Valeria fumed. She didn't understand why her spell had failed. The colour-changing charm was the first bit of wand-magic she'd ever learned! Shifting colors on the gerbil-teapot had been child's play, turning her nightgown red had only taken a minute and with a bit of effort she'd even managed to change Claude's hair. Gripping her thick wand tightly, she pointed it at the bloody rat, put all her will behind her magic and all but shouted _"COLOVARIA!"_

There was a feeling of resistance as if she were pressing against a thin wall made of gum. A split second and an audible popping sound later the wall burst, and the rat turned a brilliant, violent pink. And then her knees trembled and almost collapsed as if she'd just run a marathon or someone had grazed her with a jelly-legs jinx.

"There you go." She took a deep breath and tried not to fall on her arse from exhaustion. "The rat's pink and everything. Though that was way harder than I thought it would be. Maybe your rat is magical?" She no longer had an urge to punch the redhead in the face. Well, not repeatedly anyway. Sure, his spell had totally failed and he was still a git but it wasn't his fault. No other magic had exhausted her like that before.

"That was cool" the thin, bespectacled boy complimented and his friend grudgingly agreed. "What was the spell again?"

"The incantation's 'colovaria'..." she said breathlessly "just aim your wand and say it. Simplest charm after 'Lumos'."

"I'll remember that." He gave her a genuine smile. "I'm Harry Potter. We saw Neville before but didn't quite catch your name."

"Valeria Campbell." Was he, now? At least two of her books claimed Harry Potter was globally famous in the wizarding world - and for a very good reason. The boy before her was thin though, and short for his age. And unlike his redhead companion, he seemed nice. Not at all the pompous airhead or self-centered prat the really famous usually were. As for being the vanquisher of some terrifying dark lord, who could say. On the other hand, Valeria remembered professor McGonagal's warning; few things were as they appeared to be where wizards were concerned. Better to just observe without comment. Might help avoid complications in the future. The other boy had just introduced himself as Ron Weasley when she noticed Neville getting restless again.

"Sorry, we got to go. I promise Neville I' help him find his toad." She grabbed the timid boy's hand and escorted him to the corridor. "Have a nice trip, you two. See you at school!"

 **...**

"Oh, I'm such an idiot!" Valeria exclaimed and facepalmed.

"What is it?" Neville said with a sulk. They'd searched nearly half the train with no sign of Trevor and he was about to start crying despite her encouragement and assurances all would be OK.

"We could find Trevor using magic! Why didn't I think of that before?" Well, she couldn't. She was still tired from the pink rat incident and she was years from doing that charm well, anyway. The best she could manage was move objects with her mind if they were within a few feet. On the other hand, she didn't have to.

"Excuse me, can any of you do the summoning charm?" she asked a compartment full of older boys and girls. One of them, a redhead boy with a red and gold badge on his uniform gave her a questioning look. "Neville here has lost his toad Trevor. It would be quicker than looking."

"Sure thing, miss." The redhead flicked his wand and said _"Accio Trevor the toad!"_ In mere moments, the small familiar came flying down the length of the train, croaking all the way, and settled on the boy's outstretched hand. "Here you go." He nodded at them, handing the toad over and proving that at least three polite boys were on this train, the other two being Harry Potter and Neville himself. Or maybe that a few moments to cast a spell was something people could be bothered to do, even if helping to search for a lost pet wasn't; the jury was still out on this one. Neville and Valeria thanked the older student for his help and, relieved not to have to search the rest of the train, went back to the compartment Neville's and Valeria's trunks had been left behind.

 **...**

Their compartment was no longer empty. By the time they'd returned from their Trevor-finding quest, a pair of girls had taken up residence. This wouln't have annoyed Valeria -train compartments had room for four people- except the girls were trying some colour-changing nail polish and giggling occasionally. The smaller of the two was a petite brunette with mousy, rather plain looks and a bit shabby black robes. If not for a sardonic smirk and an amused gleam in her brown eyes, she'd be uncannily ordinary and easy to overlook even in plain sight. The other was taller, platinum-blonde an could only be described as striking. Her robes were expertly tailored, high-quality silk and she wore expensive but tasteful jewelry in silver and emeralds. Given past experiences in school Valeria wouldn't have expected those two to be friends but the casual small-talk and giggling indicated otherwise.

"Hey there Longbottom!" the brunette greeted Neville smartly. "Who's your friend?"

"Valeria Campbell, pleased to meet you" she introduced herself. Why not? She looked friendly enough.

"Campbell..." the taller blonde seemed deep in thought. "Any relation with Lennox and Angus Campbell?"

"Sorry, no." Valeria shook her head. "Never heard of them."

"Muggleborn then" the blonde stated with a frown. Curious.

"Come off your high horse Daphne!" interjected her friend. "I'm a half-blood and our family is richer than yours!" Ah. So that's what it was.

"Don't pay attention to Greengrass, here." The brunette continued with a smirk. "She has the occasional bout of insanity due to pureblood inbreeding but she's usually tolerable." She snorted at the tall blonde's indignant expression and patted her over the head. "I'm Tracey Davis, by the way."

"Pleased to meet you." Valerie smiled back and shook Tracey's hand. A moment later Daphne huffed but deigned to repeat the gesture. Ever since she'd learned the wizarding world had its own aristocracy, Valerie had been waiting for some serious snobbery. That dark lord and the civil war a decade ago had been about blood purity too the way she understood it, but Daphne's reaction had been rather mild. She'd gotten worse reactions from other students during the search for Trevor. Meeting with a moderate (or close enough) on her first day was really good luck.

"So, how do you know Longbottom?" the brunette asked as she continued painting her nails. Valerie noted that Daphne was silently observing instead of taking part in the conversation while her more talkative friend begun the covert interrogation. They weren't addressing Neville either, obviously aware of his shyness. Moderates, friendly even, but still smart.

"Oh, I just helped him find his toad." She sat next to Neville, keeping both girls in her sight. "Got to see the train, too."

"Ah." Tracey nodded in understanding. "Any interesting sights?"

"Most everyone is too busy with their friends and toys to talk to firsties." she commented with slight distaste. "But we did get to meet Harry Potter."

"Really? Do tell!" Even Tracey's silent partner perked up at that.

"Small boy, polite, friendly. Doesn't look like much. But I've been told to be wary of appearances before." Both girls inclined their heads imperceptibly at that while Neville paid attention and showed very little. "Was sitting with a tall redhead. Loud-mouthed, obnoxious, no manners. Annoyed the both of us quite a lot." When Neville didn't argue with that assessment, Tracey blinked.

"Ah, must have stumbled on a Weasley. Bad luck there girl." Tracey shrugged. "They're a bloody plague. Not bad per se but damn spoiled. They come to Hogwarts with a sense of entitlement the size of Ireland and it usually takes everyone else four or five years to fix them."

"Usually...?"

"There's a boatload of them." Tracey snorted in annoyance. "Sixth kid of theirs in Hogwarts, I hear. They grow cool and everything as they mature but till then watch your back. The twins, middle kids out of their bunch, are in third year and are still into pranks. Anyone gets in their sights, I'm not touching with a ten-foot pole..."

Tracey might be biased but Valeria wouldn't count on it. She'd met the Weasley scion after all. The smalltalk was pleasant and informative and as time passed, Neville and Daphne tentatively joined their discussion. Despite several misgivings about the coming months firmly based on fact, Valeria felt her hopes rising once more. She believed she now had a good idea on how she stood against her peers in terms of magic, and some hints about school politics. She was -hopefully- making friends or at least cultivating contacts. Everything was looking up.

Now if only Daphne would elaborate on this test that decided in what House they'd be in. She only knew nine spells well enough to cast. That was adequate, wasn't it?

 **...**


	4. Into the darkest house

**Some points on the last chapter. Valeria's impromptu decision was to befriend Neville, not help him. She'd be helping him anyway because she got him to help her with finding a compartment first and, more importantly, it was an excuse to enter occupied compartments all over the train uninvited and meet people without appearing rude. She hinted exactly that to Tracey later and the other Slytherin got it. Due to that Valeria got to meet Harry and Ron at the canonical time but for different reasons. She'd been planning to check out the whole train but her little stunt with a certain rat left her too exhausted. Also, she did find Trevor for Neville indirectly when she asked for help - in canon, it's Hagrid who finds him.**

 **I'm trying to show Val being cunning in some things but still naive in others. Her flaws are shown a bit in this chapter too.**

 **Speaking of Hagrid, he is capable of animation, vanishing, conjuration and very nearly human transfiguration nonverbally, without any flashy special effects and with a broken wand he isn't even holding directly. For someone expelled in his third year, that always struck me at least as impressive as his size.**

 **Disclaimer: Harry Potter was spawned by Rowling like wisdom from Zeus' own head. In comparison I am at best a lowly satyr playing in her back yard.**

 **...**

"Wow!"

Tracey snickered at Valeria's surprise though Daphne murmured _'you can say that again'_ at the spectacle before them. It wasn't Hogwarts though. By the time the students had reached their destination, night had fallen and the small station they'd left behind was largely deserted. There was a village back there too, if the many lights and the occasional smoking chimney were anything to go by.

No, what had left the muggleborn witch and many of the other first-years dumbfounded was the veritable giant that led them towards a small fleet of boats by the lake. Twice as tall as a normal man and thrice as wide, he wore a titanic leather and fur coat, had dark hair like a wild bush and wore boots large enough to fit a first-year with room to spare. Working a quick multiplication through her surprise, Valeria turned to her companions.

"So, what is he?"

"Keeper of Keys and Grounds for Hogwarts." Daphne said with some distaste. "Mother told me how he was a student before her time but never finished his studies. Not good enough, I guess."

"Not what I meant." Valeria did not comment on the other girl's snobbish ways; the taller blonde was a pureblood after all. "What species is he? He must be near twelve feet tall and weigh over a ton; humans don't grow so large." She rephrased that a bit. "Or at least muggles don't. The tallest muggle _ever_ was three feet shorter and maybe a third his weight."

"Really?" Tracey asked with a gleam in her eye. The brunette loved gossip and her expression looked as if Christmas had come early. "Do you think he's half and half?"

"Huh?" Valeria couldn't make head or tails of the question.

"Never mind that." Daphne interrupted them and claimed a boat for the three girls, Neville and Neville's toad. Trevor rode first-class in a Tupperware container Valeria had given to the absent-minded boy after opening a couple of air holes on the lid. Daphne asking when she'd learned to cast the Softening and Unbreakable Charms had led to an hour-long discussion on the merits of plastics and synthetic fibers.

The waters of the lake were black and ominous and the small, oar-less boats didn't seem safe enough to her. But as nobody else complained about it, Valeria couldn't say anything. Instead, she decided to copy Tracey and closely observe their escort while keeping an ear on Neville and Daphne who were discussing the Hogwarts houses. The very large man was fascinating in a different way than the wizards she'd already met. Despite his obvious size, he wasn't flashy at all. For one thing, there was no way the small boat supported his weight without magic. For another, as soon as everyone was aboard he tapped his own boat once with an umbrella and the whole small fleet started moving towards the castle. No words, no lights, no fuss. And while that umbrella was positively enormous, not only did he flick it around so casually people barely noticed but it also wasn't a wand. Valeria bet most wizards would just ignore it as a potential threat for that reason alone. Very nice. If what she'd read about the Hogwarts houses was true, their escort must have been a great Slytherin.

About a minute later Hogwarts appeared through the mists ahead and each and every first-year stared at it, eyes wide. Their school was to castles what their escort was to normal people; an enormous, fantastic, sprawling installation of medieval walls, crenelations and towers that, framed by the light of the moon under the night sky, looked nothing short of awesome. The small fleet of boats approached the foothills of the massive rocks the castle was built upon and for a moment Valeria feared they'd crash and founder. But no, a low ceilinged cave mouth appeared, an ivy curtain hiding its interior, and the boats crossed one by one underneath and into the underground waterway beyond. Soon enough, they reached an underground boat bay illuminated by torches that had burst into flame on their own at their approach, with stairs leading higher up and presumably into the castle.

"Tha firs' year students, professor McGonagal." The very large man said to the approaching deputy headmistress. McGonagal had dressed for the occasion with a higher-quality, more free-flowing emerald dress than she had when she first came to Valeria's house. Apparently, wizards called this style of dress 'robes', though Valeria couldn't guess why they insisted on the difference. Must be a wizard thing.

"Thank you Hagrid." Ah, so that was their escort's name. Good to know. "Follow me, everyone." They were soon led into an empty, dimly lit, stone-walled antechamber large enough to fit Valerie's entire house, with massive wooden, iron-bound doors separating it from the rest of the castle. The professor instructed them to wait there until the Sorting was to begin and then went inside. Valerie was quickly learning how subtle magic could be; despite the doors' obvious size and thickness, the middle-aged deputy headmistress opened and closed them with no apparent effort. Left on their own, the first-years started talking about the sorting and the various houses.

"So, where do you think you'll be sorted?" Tracey asked in the slightly mocking tone Valeria suspected was her usual.

"Slytherin, probably..." Daphne interjected. "The family has been going there for generations."

"Yes, yes, pureblood and proud, we know" snarked the brunette. "How 'bout you, Longbottom?"

"I..I'll probably be in H-hufflepuff..." he stuttered uncertainly. Daphne sighed in exasperation while Tracey snorted at that.

"Nothing wrong with hard work." Valeria said. "For myself, Ravenclaw I believe. Or Slytherin. If being sorted in the house of subtlety before the entire school doesn't invalidate being subtle, that is." All three of her new probably-friends stared at her. Daphne's dainty eyebrows almost met at her severe frown but no lines marred her pale face. "What?" she asked her near-friends, irritation rising. "Did I say something wrong?"

She never got an answer to her question because at that very moment many of the kids around them screamed. The three girls and Neville searched for the source of everyone's alarm. What they found were the Hogwarts ghosts she'd read about; a small group of off-white, translucent people had floated through the wall and were now flying overhead, discussing the mischief of someone named Peeves. Neville had jumped and now looked rather uncertain, Tracey had gasped in surprise more than everything else and Daphne looked at everyone who had shouted with icy pureblood disdain. Valeria herself didn't know what to think. Could the ghosts cause harm or, like, possess people? The book didn't mention anything about it so she took her cue from the purebloods she'd met on the train. If those that knew the most about the wizarding world seemed to think everything was fine, no reason to embarrass herself. In the end, there was no need to worry. Most of the ghosts ignored the first-years except for a chubby, round man in medieval monk's attire. He was the House ghost of Hufflepuff so naturally he wished everyone would find their way into his house. Well, nobody said Hufflepuffs couldn't be greedy - though she'd had him pegged as more of a glutton.

 **...**

The Great Hall more than justified its name; it was the size of a cathedral, and just as elaborate. Bronze decorated the walls and doors and expensive wood made up five tables over two hundred feet long each, around which the four Houses and the staff gathered. Silk cloth adorned with gold and silver was draped over them and hung in flags over the students' heads and behind the professors' seats. Candles hung on their own accord in mid-air -thousands of them- illuminating the vast space with a soft light, and gold and crystal covered the tables; dining plates, silverware and glasses that waited to be filled. But most impressive and magical of all, the night sky had been brought inside and hung overhead, a sea of velvet studded with silver lights. Even someone who'd read all about it would be astounded, for all the descriptions Valeria had seen in books had been found lacking, all the words in the world paling before reality.

Over half a thousand faces stared down at the arriving first-years, making even those supremely confident like Daphne or usually calm and collected like Valeria almost shaking with trepidation. She got the nagging feeling there was something wrong with that great crowd surrounding the single file of newcomers but for the life of her Valeria couldn't focus; her mind seemed to have stopped and her tongue seemed stuck to the roof of her mouth. The pressure of the deciding moment mounted higher and higher until a single voice broke through with a song. It didn't belong to McGonagall, another professor or even a student; it issued forth from a hat! A piece of cloth so worn and patched it barely warranted the name sat on a stool and explained its own purpose in a jaunty tune. Valeria was torn between relief and indignation. On one hand, she would not have to face some unknown challenge before an entire legion of observers but on the other, two months of preparation and hard work with the occasional panic attack or nightmare about not measuring up had just been invalidated by the wizarding world's weirdness. No.. that were her own insecurities speaking. No preparation, no learning of any kind was ever wasted. Her own efforts might not be needed for the sorting after all but at least she'd have closed the experience gap between the pureblood scions and her muggleborn self.

"Abbot, Hannah!" A pink-faced blonde with cute pigtails went forth and only after moments of wearing the hat it shouted "HUFFLEPUFF!"

"Bones, Susan!" The slim girl with her copper hair in a long plait down her back also went into Hufflepuff without problems. The yellow and brown clad students, more numerous than other houses by a small margin, gave another thundering applause.

"Boot, Terry!" A quiet brunet in expensive silks; probably a pureblood then. He was the first to go to RAVENCLAW! and his blue-robed housemates welcomed his addition in a calmer but no less excited ovation as the hufflepuffs before them.

"Brown, Lavender!" The dirty blonde with the round face, brown eyes and way too many curls went to the red and gold throng of GRYFFINDOOR! after a short silence, who were now shouting all out of proportion with their numbers. Valeria could see at least two gingers that looked and behaved suspiciously like Ron Weasley; she frowned in distaste.

"Bulstrode, Millicent!" The fourth girl to be sorted was a heavyset brunette with a purposeful stride. It took the hat only a second to put her to SLYTHERIN!

"Campbell, Valeria!"

Valeria hesitated for only a split second as her name was called and then walked towards the sorting hat with determination. She sat on the stool with as much elegance as her nerves would allow and slowly put on the ancient wizard's hat with her back straight. The worn brim came down over her eyes and ears and all sounds were cut as if with a knife. She couldn't tell if everyone was waiting for the verdict or if she'd been magically silenced. All she could tell was that she was no longer alone...

 _"Very astute"_ the sorting hat's voice spoke into her mind. _"You are both inquisitive and highly perceptive. Rowena's house would be happy to have you among their number."_ The hat paused as if waiting. _"You're also no stranger to patience and hard work, but your intolerance would make you no friends in Helga's circle."_ She was intolerant? Since when? Stupid hat... _"Yet you're also resourceful, determined, talented. You can become rather vicious when threatened, begin with subtlety but are no stranger to force and accept few limits imposed by others. By far the best house for you would be_ SLYTHERIN!"

With her new house's name shouted out for all to hear, Valeria took off the judgmental piece of cloth and walked steadily and proudly towards the table of green and silver amid enthusiastic clapping. She took a seat next to the other newly-sorted girl and stared down at her still-empty plate. Her annoyed reflection stared back from the silvery surface. Who had the oh so brilliant idea to confront the first-year students with their own characters on their first day at school before the entire student body? Wasn't the beginning of a ten-month separation from their families and their entering an unfamiliar place or even world with unfamiliar people for the first time enough of a challenge? Besides, they were eleven! People changed a hell of a lot till adulthood so why measure them then?

Valeria forced herself to pay attention once more. She no longer had any desire to observe the 'sorting' but her near-friends might be disappointed if she didn't. Besides, it was a learning opportunity. Those were always good for you, even when unpleasant. It took half an hour for everyone to be sorted and it ultimately proved rather informative. Tracey and Daphne quickly followed her into Slytherin. She congratulated them along with the rest of the table as they took up their seats and within moments Tracey was casually making snide remarks about every other 'ickle firstie' while Daphne was turning up her nose icily at everyone and everything. The sorting almost came to a halt when Harry Potter's turn came up. Everyone in the Great Hall waited in total silence for the hat's verdict and Valeria understood then just how famous the skinny, bespectacled boy was. When the hat put him in Gryffindor that table practically exploded and every other House was terribly disappointed. Even among the biting remarks of her fellow slytherins there were quite a few forlorn sighs. Neville on the other hand was laughed at by nearly everyone for forgetting to take off the hat after his sorting. He looked as mortified as Valeria would have been in his place. Maybe joining the house of the brave would do him some good.

Unfortunately, not everything went as well as she had hoped. For one thing, Weasley was sorted into Gryffindor too. She was glad she wouln't be sharing a house with him but if he tried infecting Neville with his attitude, she would be having quite a few sharp words with him. Some of them would be the incantation for the Stinging Hex, repeatedly. At least now that the sorting was over the feast could begin. After the day-long trip on the train, the search and the unusually difficult color-changing charm she'd cast on Weasley's fat rodent she was positively starving.

 **...**

"That can't be right" Valeria said to the older girl to her right, as she was trying to enjoy the sweet-sour pork, the sauteed mushrooms and the grape juice. Apparently the professors thought them too young for wine but soft drinks were fair game. "If all three other houses are biased against our own, it would make for a hostile and unfair learning environment."

"Welcome to Slytherin, sweetheart." Gemma Farley confirmed sarcastically. She was a prefect with five years' experience in the school so Valeria didn't exactly doubt it... but if it was true how had Slytherin been winning the House Cup for six years in a row? "At least Professor Snape, our own head of house, helps even things out."

"What about the other teachers?" she asked, trying to understand the situation.

"McGonagal is strict and seems scrupulously fair but is more likely to believe accusations against us. Sprout is happy to preside over the insufferable ball of sunshine that is Hufflepuff and is proud her house has the least number of dark wizards of all. The diminutive head of Ravenclaw keeps out of politics and so does his house, but occasionally side with the Lions against us. Most of the other teachers are neutral but the main problem is Dumbledore." Gemma fiddled with her chicken wings; she was rapily losing her appetite. "Over the years he's introduced regulations that seem fairly innocuous but actually hurt purebloods a lot more than they do everyone else. Like the broomstick restrictions on first-years Malfoy is harping on about; supposedly it's for the first-years' safety but many pureblood kids have been riding brooms for years already." She scowled at the elaborate throne the ancient-looking headmaster occupied at the moment. "He is so against the dark arts that not only many books on the subject have been removed from the library but we're not even properly taught Defense; it's been so long since he last hired a decent teacher everybody these days thinks the position is jinxed."

"What!?" Valeria exclaimed, totally appalled. The headmaster himself sabotaging such an important subject? Was he insane? The old wizard's weird declaration at the start of the feast seemed to support that.

"It's Merlin's honest truth." Gemma confirmed, chewed down, then lowered her voice to a whisper. "There are even rumors he has something on professor Snape. Everybody knows our head of house would love the Defense job but somehow, every year there's a vacancy he never gets to apply and keeps teaching potions. He's brilliant in them too but frankly? I don't think he enjoys teaching them."

Bloody perfect. Prejudice against Slytherins, house rivalries, professors politicking instead of teaching and a meddlesome headmaster in not-so-subtle opposition to her new house. Valeria really hoped all that had been Gemma's jaded, prejudiced opinion and rather far from reality. She enjoyed learning new things and liked to pursue perfection and recognition in her studies and goals, and politics were usually inimical to all forms of education. She saw magic as a wonderful new world of limitless potential and couldn't care less for all the problems that cropped up in any society over time, especially one as long-lived as wizarding Britain.

Luckily, it was Sunday evening and the first week of school proper started tommorow. She resolved to stick to her lessons no matter what, and leave the politics to the idiots and the old men...


	5. First lessons

**Hey guys, this is a bit late. Lots of research, it is a bit larger than my usual chapters too. OTOH, I did mention this story would focus on the magic, yes? The books contain all those awesome characters and lessons that aren't really developed; the information is there (if even in latter books or online) but we never get any good magic lessons except for those that have to do with the plot. So I decided this story would have some emphasis on actually showing them.** **Now, keep in mind that our heroine is a Slytherin. Some people would react differently to her but, more importantly, she would react and think of them differently as well.**

 **Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J. . I'm merely borrowing her awesomeness to write for fun. Especially Snape's dialogue in this chapter.**

Valeria was exhausted as she followed Gemma Farley out of the Great Hall along with the rest of the Slytherin first years. All the excitement of the day was finally catching up to her and she was a dead witch walking... or at least a really sleepy one. She had barely heard what headmaster Dumbledore had said at the end of the feast and had the vague impression something was seriously wrong either with his announcement or with Dumbledore himself but hadn't the energy to consider it properly. It felt just like two months ago when she'd first started trying the simplest of spells and had overtaxed herself in her eagerness; her head pounded as if she'd just read half a thousand pages in one sitting.

Gemma led them away from the Great Hall and down several stairs carved into rock that, fortunately for the tired first-years, didn't move, vanish, transform into spiky pit traps or anything else stupid, dangerous, or stupidly dangerous. The fifth-year prefect led them down a dark and chilly corridor, the occasional everlasting torch only providing feeble illumination. She then signaled them to stop and made an all-encompassing gesture at their surroundings.

"Here we are, firsties. The Hogwarts dungeons. Right next to me you can find the potions classroom and further down is the office of our illustrious Head of House, potions master Severus Snape." She pointed to the two wooden, iron-bound doors worn and rusty with age. "This is also the entrance to the dungeons and the only dungeon level first-years are allowed in." Her eyes narrowed and became sharp and cold as two pieces of flint. "This is not a warning. This is not a school rule. It is a threat. If you venture there you will have earned professor Snape's displeasure... assuming you survive, of course." The fifth-year girl then led them only a few dozen feet down the corridor and before an empty stretch of wall. "Nobility!" Gemma said to the empty wall, only it was an empty wall no longer. It seemed to fold in on itself until it formed an opening wide enough for them to pass. It led into yet another dungeonlike chamber but unlike the rest of the dungeons they'd seen so far it had been prepared and decorated for human habitation. Magical lamps shed a soft green light on many low backed black and dark green button-tufted, leather sofas; skulls; and dark wood cupboards. A fire burned fiercely in a fireplace, trying to fight off the chill and moisture of the dungeons but it was a losing battle. Several windows looked out and into total, impenetrable darkness; even the light from the globes only seemed to shine a few inches beyond them and then vanish. With a start, Valeria realized water rather than air was beyond the windows. As she thought about it, it made sense; they had descended too far to be above ground even at the castle's lowest point so any windows would look out to a cave... or the large lake they'd crossed via boat on their journey here.

"Home sweet home." Gemma said with a fond smile. "This is the Slytherin common room, firsties. The password you must speak to enter is 'Nobility' for the moment but it will be changing every fortnight. New passwords will appear on the notice board behind me at the appointed time." Valeria had actually failed to notice said board. Stupid aching head. "Sharing the password with anyone is forbidden. No exceptions. In addition, it will only work if said by someone who's actually in Slytherin." Gemma said drily. Many of the first years oohed and aahed at that declaration and the thought of secret bases. "Out of all the rooms in Hogwarts, this one has the most preservation and durability enchantments. This is out of necessity as it's both part of the castle's foundation and under the Black Lake. Such features also keep the common room intact during student duels -which are not unheard of- or when a pair of sixth year Gryffindors use the bubblehead charm to get into the lake and try to break the windows from the outside - which is also not unheard of and may result in serious point loss and encounters with the Giant Squid." The prefect smiled at them. "It may not be the coziest place in Hogwarts or the most welcoming, but it is ours. We older students like to feel that our hangout has the aura of a mysterious, underwater shipwreck."

"Now, our House also has several rules of conduct you should all remember and follow." Her expression turned serious as she looked down at all of them. "How we -and now you- act and behave reflects upon our glorious house just as much as the qualities Slytherin is known for. Remember that well."

"First rule: unity before adversity. The other houses are already against us; no need to parade any of our own differences and disagreements before them." She sighed. "When, not if, you have a problem with another member of the house, resolve it in private. A united front is our best defense and if you break it there will be hell to pay." Some of the kids nodded, beginning to understand what pressure from the other houses would mean.

"Second rule: status matters. Academic achievements, magical talent, contacts and connections, accomplishments for the house itself. Those can and will put you ahead of your classmates, afford you more privileges, earn you the ear of prefects and our Head of House and generally make your life better. This happens in all houses of course." She snorted with amusement. "The Lions measure themselves in who's the most suicidally daring, the Badgers in so-called fairness and hard work, the Ravens in who's the biggest know-it-all. They will deny it but it happens here and everywhere else. Success matters in life and here in Slytherin we make it official to prepare you." More of the first years were whispering now, discussing what exactly such status could buy. Loudest of all was a rather annoying blond boy Valera remembered as 'Draco Malfoy' from the sorting.

"Third rule: do not get caught." Gemma smirked nastily. "This is the most important rule of the house and the world in general; if you can get away with it, it didn't happen. Remember however that those that catch you do not have to always follow the rules either. So don't get caught. If you do, you'll suffer professor Snape's displeasure." Almost everyone else was laughing by then and Valeria was half asleep. She didn't remember any other rules when she woke up Monday morning... or any other details from the day before for that matter.

 **...**

Green silken sheets infused with a pleasant warmth despite the dungeon's chilling atmosphere, a mattress as soft and squishy as she could have ever hoped, pillows as light and fluffy as clouds. Unlike last night, Valeria was no longer too tired to appreciate both the expense and the magic that had been spent lavishly on the Slytherin dormitories. Her bed alone was wider and longer than any she'd ever seen, four bronze posts in the shape of coiling snakes holding up an elaborately carved roof depicting amusing scenes of a snake setting two badgers against each other, tricking a lion into a trap, and sneaking up on an unsuspecting raven who was too busy reading a book to notice. In the coziness of her dormitory, free of yesterday's exhaustion, she giggled. Who would have thought the House of Serpents could be so much fun?

"Come on slowpokes, we have class today!" she cried as she opened the heavy curtains around her four-poster and jumped out into the sideroom the first-year girls would be housed during the school year.

"Go away..." mumbled Tracey from within her own bed. "...need my beauty sleep."

"Maeve's knickers, Caldwell!" came Daphne's muffled groan from the bed next to it. "It's bloody six in the morning. Classes start at nine!"

"Exactly! We only got three hours to prepare!" Valeria said excitedly as she dressed at a frantic pace then made a beeline for the bathroom. Twenty minutes later - practically record time - she came back, took out her first-year textbooks and equipment and ran out. Her two friends had fallen asleep once more and she left too quickly to quite catch the comments about _'stupid mudbloods'_ coming from the other side of the dormitory.

 **...**

The diminutive and excitable Professor Flitwick was so short he had to use a pile of books as a ladder to be able to see anything from behind his desk. Several students laughed but the ease with which he'd magically called the book and later climbed them indicated he was hardly inconvenienced at all, let alone embarassed. In fact, given his surprising agility and magical ability, Valeria suspected he was using his height as an excuse to have a bit of fun in class!

The first hour of the class was dedicated to wand use. Professor Flitwick cheerfully taught them what the best wand grip was depending on the length and thickness of their own wand, the size of their hand and the type of magic they wanted to cast at the moment. Then he instructed them how to use their determination and expectation of a known result to launch bright sparks out of their wandtips. Creating sparks was something every single wizard and witch with a wand had already done on buying said wand and probably many times later - but none of them knew how to do it intentionally and consistently yet. The Charms Master explained how the lesson was fundamental in using any spell as it had to do with the entirely nonphysical aspects of spellcasting; intention and knowledge. Making magic work when you wanted to in the form that you expected was the basis of all wizardry, after all.

Valeria was momentarily surprised, then hugely embarassed. Such an explanation of the basic concept was entirely absent from her textbooks, even Theory of Magic. Even though she'd learned and cast several simple spells, she'd simply not considered it in those terms. And yet, it was precisely what she'd been doing when casting; she'd really wanted the spells to work and after reading the detailed, academic instructions in her textbooks she'd known they were supposed to work. And thus they had, just like the simple tricks she'd been doing since she was little.

Which was precisely her problem when she tried to make sparks with her wand. The torrent of tiny flames she'd first created in Ollivanders' workshop came back with a vengeance, drilled through her desk and started sizzling against the stone floor. Professor Flitwick flicked his wand with a flourish and his easy smile disappeared when the tiny flames momentarily dimmed. He immediately performed a series of sharp jabs, snuffing them out not with water but stomping them with invisible force. He did it a lot faster than professor McGonagal had done, too.

"Five points to Slytherin miss Campbell, for such an impressive first display." He gave her a calming smile then tapped her desk with his wand. The smoking holes vanished outright. "Could you please stay for a few minutes after the lesson?" Some of her classmates started whispering about the whole thing but most concentrated on making their own sparks. By the time the lesson ended, everyone had managed to do at least some intentional magic.

"Tell me miss Campbell, was it the first time this has happened?" the professor asked kindly when they were alone.

"No, it's always like this." She bit her lip. A little white lie never hurt anyone. "Well, not exactly. It first happened when I got my wand. It then happened by accident a couple of times when I was frustrated with a spell not working or really tired, though those times it was only one or two little flames, not a torrent."

"I see..." the diminutive professor snapped his fingers decidedly. "OK, try again."

"What...?"

"Go on miss Campbell, show me some sparks." He cackled and it was a good one espite his size and gender. "But aim for the floor please." Valeria returned his smile tentatively then flicked her wand. Four or five little tongues of flame spattered on the stone floor, scorching an area the size of her palm. The professor stamped them out with magic once more.

"Hmm. Could you increase the number of flames?" Increase them? But... Valeria sighed and did as asked but try as she might she couldn't match her original performance. The most she could do was about a dozen little flames and the closest she got to normal sparks when they started toning down her efforts was three flickering glows that stung a bit before vanishing. Normal sparks eluded her. "Curious." Commented the charms master himself. "Keep trying for some entirely harmless sparks on your free time miss Campbell, as they're rather useful. But otherwise an excellent show."

Valeria couldn't help but giggle. Flitwick seemed to share her enthusiasm for magic even after his many years using it. She took it as a good omen that she, too, could grow into a happy witch that never stopped trying to improve her craft.

 **...**

History of Magic was a total bust. Initially excited to be taught by a ghost and wondering how much history they'd learn by someone who'd actually lived the events he was teaching about, Valeria's hopes were unceremoniously drowned by Binns' incessant droning monologue. Five minutes into the class, some people were already half-asleep. Theodore Nott was discussing his favorite Quiddich team with Millicent Bulstrode and Pansy Parkinson was painting her nails with color-shifting ink. When Tracey and Daphne shrugged and started reading Witch Weekly, Valeria had had enough. She placed her magic quill on some empty parchment, put it in the dictation setting and took out her wand and a few slivers of wood. She absolutely refused to waste her valuable time and some more practice never hurt anyone. After all, if Binns did manage to say something important or stopped repeating their textbook word-for-word and actually offered useful commentary, she could always read about it in her automatically-taken notes.

Defense Against the Dark Arts was taught by a thin, young wizard that went by the strange name Quirinus Quirrel. His skittish behaviour, odd choice of deodorant (garlic, really?), unusual headgear and pronounced stutter would easily make one think him a fool, very much on par with Binns. Appearances however could be deceiving. Once the introductions were out of the way, the professor instructed them in the casting of the wand-lighting charm. Despite its simplicity and ease of casting that allowed everyone in the class to manage it within half an hour, it was one of the most useful magics first-year students were taught. Valeria had managed it on her own before but was fascinated with professor Quirrel's explanations of its many uses that weren't included in the books. Scaring off light-sensitive dark creatures and the less intelligent beasts. Sending coded messages when secrecy or silence was paramount, or local conditions made using speech impossible or detrimental. After all, Aurors couldn't explain the plan out loud in the middle of a fight with evil wizards! Signaling by flickering the light on and off, varying its intensity or even color. Using it to counter the weaker types of magical darkness, draw the attention of your enemies where you wanted it to be, or surprising them and ruining their night vision before a fight. When and why you shouldn't use it or at least limit intensity and redirect its effects to avoid becoming a target or giving away your position. By the time the lesson ended, the unassuming professor had gained the respect and awe of every first-year Slytherin.

For Herbology they went out to the castle grounds and into Greenhouse one where the chubby, matronly Head of Hufflepuff waited for them. Much like Quirrel, Pomona Sprout might not look like much but she knew her business. She kindly guided them through the easier tasks of handling and caring for the more common magical plants and told them how to avoid the more common beginner mistakes. Nearly an hour into the lesson most everyone was sweaty, dirty and physically exhausted but Tracey seemed to be having fun and Millicent Bulstrode, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle had found all the exercise rather easy. She and Daphne had to struggle a bit with the physical work but did well in the theory. Valeria ultimately decided to do her best in classwork and mastering the simple herbology-related spells but wasn't sure she'd ever feel comfortable working with this subject.

Professor Sprout explained why Herbology studied herbs, fungi, vines and other types of magical plants and how it was instrumental in providing ingredients for Potions, Care for Magical Creatures, Healing, Enchantment, Wandmaking and Alchemy. When Draco Malfoy commented he could always buy ingredients from someone else, the professor snorted derisively and said that attitude was exactly why the price of ingredients was always rising. Not to mention that the amount of care and hard work you put into growing, harvesting and processing a plant significantly influenced its magical properties and that most ingredients in the market were only up to the Ministry's minimum standards. Without competent herbalists some of the more demanding high-end magical tasks would be impossible. Besides, ingredient production was hardly the only use for magical plants. Devil's Snare for example, a type of vine that preferred the dark and damp environment of Greenhouse five, could be used as a defense or trap and was even employed in covert assassinations. After that veiled threat was delivered in professor Sprout's matronly, cheerful way, her standing in many Slytherins' opinion rose dramatically.

For Astronomy, they had to climb all the way to the highest tower in Wendesday night. When the young, dark-skinned, dark-haired Aurora Sinestra showed them how to use the school telescopes, Valeria needed several minutes to recover the ability to speak. A muggle astronomer would kill for the vision enhancement and light amplification enchantments worked into the three-foot-long brass instruments; through them she could clearly see the ice-covered craters in several of the moons of Jupiter! As the class worked out how to handle the telescopes while taking notes at the same time, professor Sinestra explained how the movement of celestial bodies in the solar system and beyond affected the harvesting of potions ingredients, played a fundamental role in most types of Divination, impacted the effectiveness of ancient runes and influenced many alchemical processes and ancient rituals through their arithmantic and semantic connotations. In fact, it was the study of astronomy by ancient sumerian sorcerors that led to the development of both Arithmancy and muggle mathematics. Valeria was somewhat disappointed they wouldn't be delving into the magical aspect of Astronomy before NEWT level but suspected they'd be focusing on the observation and theoretical aspects because at least some basis in the aforementioned magical subjects would be needed before they could understand the magic involved.

Head of Gryffindor she might be, professor McGonagal proved firm but fair to her joint Slytherin-Ravenclaw class. She first warned them of the dangers of transfiguration and the overall difficulty of the subject and Valeria found no reason to doubt her; her first transfiguration attempt had taken her hundreds of times longer than her first charm to finish. After she showed the whole class a perfect example of inanimate to animate transfiguration by changing a desk into a pig with a single flick of her wand and not a hint of incantation, the professor spent the first half of the lesson instructing them on the theory behind the simplest transfiguration in the book; changing a matchstick into a needle. A tallish, dark skinned brunette from Ravenclaw by the name of Padma Patil posed some interesting and clever questions and McGonagal gave her five points for her understanding of theory. She then explained to the rest of the class that the theory wasn't actually needed when one already knew the spell they had to use. However, a need to change matchsticks to needles in real life was unlikely. The real goal was understanding how wood-to-metal transfiguration functioned at its core, and then apply it as needed. Given the countless shapes and sizes the two materials could be found in, memorizing by rote all the different spells for all the times they would need to change wood to metal was impossible but mastering the theory would allow them to adapt it to each specific case... after years of practice.

The theory portion done, the professor gave everyone a matchstick and allowed them the remaining hour to attempt to change it. Valeria was glad she'd practiced in advance, both during the summer and earlier in the week. It had taken her an hour and a half to finish the first time she attempted the spell; had the lesson today been her first time instead, she would not have finished it in time and would have failed the assignment! Extremely happy to have avoided that mortifying fate she managed to transform her matchstick after several minutes, and a pleased and surprised professor McGonagal awarded fifteen points to Slytherin. She gave her additional matchsticks to practice on to see if she could cut down on the time it took her even further. By the time the lesson ended, Valeria had produced several more needles. Some Ravenclaws and a few Slytherins were whispering about it, while Padma and Pansy were obviously angry. The two of them were the only other students to have fully changed their matchstick into metal though they had some work left on the shape. As everyone walked out of the class, Tracey and Daphne followed her and caught up just as she entered the Great Staircase.

"How did you do that, Caldwell?" the taller blonde asked curiously. "I happen to know for a fact the Parkinsons got Pansy a tutor for the summer and the Patil family is very talented in transfiguration."

"Well..." Valeria hesitated. "Let's just say that practice makes perfect. Had it been my first time, I'd have done hardly any better than they did."

"History of Magic, right?" Tracey said, remembering. "I saw you, I think."

"And the mornings and afternoons, during Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday." Valeria carefully navigated the moving stairs, counting under her breath till they next shifted. "Why not try some simple spells then show off for the points?"

"That's why you disappear all day? You should have been in Hufflepuff..." Daphne said. "On the other hand, a Badger wouldn't be doing it for the points if they even thought to try." She shook her pretty head. "Where to now?"

"The library. I want to check out some spells to make Herbology lessons easier." Groans followed that pronouncement but the other two girls stayed by her side. They, too, approved of a bit of work now to avoid more work or gain more points in the future.

 **...**

Friday found them in the dungeons for the Double Potions class with Gryffindor. Valeria had been revising especially for it. Since it was taught by their Head of House, it would not do to be caught ignorant or unprepared. Even better, it was her first chance to see some of the people she'd met back on the Hogwarts Express.

"Hey Neville, Harry" she greeted them. "How are you guys doing?"

"Get away from us, you slimy snake!" muttered Weasley through gritted teeth. Valeria returned his scowl with interest.

"I was speaking to my friends. I'm fairly certain you're not one of them."

"'Course not!" the annoying ginger exclaimed. "As if I'd befriend someone who'd curse people's pets. Scabbers has still not recovered from what you did to him!"

"Oh yes, a pink rat. It's the end of the world!" Tracey and Daphne snorted in amusement. "It was a simple color-changing charm Weasley, not a curse."

"No it wasn't!" he insisted angrily. "I still can't change him back."

"That's a problem with your skill, isn't it?" Weasley's face turned redder than a tomato. "Go see a teacher. I'm sure they could help you out while Harry, Neville and I are talking, as I originally intended." She gestured idly for him to get out of the way. "That was a hint, by the way."

It was then that Valeria realized neither Harry nor Neville had said anything yet, not even after Weasley had insulted her in his anger and idiocy. Neville looked mightily apologetic and uncertain, while Harry was watching her critically, as if she was something unusual but dangerous he was seeing for the first time.

"I don't think they want to talk, Valeria." Daphne whispered to her. The three girls didn't much want to make a scene at the moment and the lesson was about to begin so they found some empty seats and sat down. As more students claimed a place in the potions classroom, the house division became evident; every Gryffindor sat to the right while the Slytherins took up the desks in the left side of class. Valeria sat closest to the middle than most other Slytherins and a still uncertain Neville took position on the desk to her immediate right.

Professor Snape entered the class with a brisk walk, black cloak swishing impressively behind him. He was a man of above-average height, with shoulder-length straight black hair, black eyes, pale skin and a very serious expression. He wasted little time with introductions and took roll call. He paused at Harry Potter's name and made a snarky comment on the boy's celebrity status. After Harry's silent support of Weasley's stupidity, Valeria didn't find it in her to care.

"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potionmaking," professor Snape began. He spoke in a sibilant whisper, forcing everyone to pay close attention or miss critical information - a clever way to ensure attentiveness from a group of eleven-year-olds. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses.…I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death — if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."

The entire class fell silent. Weasley stared at Potter with raised eyebrows; Valeria would have been certain he was worried if she weren't sure he was too much of a dimwit to realize the problems he was about to have. She shifted in her seat to get ready, just in case the professor was about to test their intelligence. She wasn't disappointed.

"Potter!" said Snape suddenly. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?" Potter glanced at Weasley, who looked as stumped as he was; Valeria's hand had shot into the air; the answer wasn't really part of the curicculum but it was in the textbook as an example. Apparently professor Snape was testing their thoroughness and preparation. Or maybe he was trying to humiliate Potter - but why would he?

"I don't know, sir," said Harry. Professor Snape's lips curled into a sneer.

"Tut, tut — fame clearly isn't everything." His eyes scanned the students and narrowed as he spotted her raised hand. "How about you, miss Campbell was it?"

"They make one of the strongest known sleeping potions, sir." Valeria answered with confidence. "It is so powerful it has been named the 'Draught of Living Death'" The professor did not react in any way, his face expressionless. He turned back towards the Gryffindors' side of the class.

"Let's try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?" Apparently Harry didn't have the faintest idea what a bezoar was. Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle were shaking with silent laughter, obviously pleased at his ignorance. Valeria couldn't say she shared that sentiment but she did know the answer and thus raised her hand. Why oh why didn't anyone ever look into a textbook's appendix? Most students simply ignored them but that was exactly where the answer to professor Snape's question was.

"I don't know, sir."

"Thought you wouldn't open a book before coming, eh, Potter?" Snape shook his head. "Yes, miss Campbell?"

"It is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat, sir. When properly extracted, it has the power to cure most poisons." Several Slytherins were now observing with interest but Weasley glared. It annoyed her so she decided to joke at the Gryffindors' expense. "Though since there aren't any goats in Hogwarts sir, I'd try searching for one in the classe's ingredients cupboard. In case someone was poisoned and we were trying to help, it would just be common sense to look there first." The barest hint of upwards movement momentarily flickered in professor Snape's severe frown.

"What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?" Again, it was a question simple to answer, but only if one had carefully read the book end to end. It was mentioned only in passing in an example of modern advances in potions research and way above their level. But Valeria remembered it precisely because the information was unusual.

"I don't know," said Harry quietly. "I think some Slytherins do, though, why don't you try them again?" What the hell? Was Potter insinuating professor Snape had set this up in advance, giving her the answers before the lesson started? Valeria's right hand clutched the desk so hard her fingers turned white. Her left had her wand in a deathgrip but she didn't dare draw and use it. Chances were she'd end up throwing another torrent of flame; burning alive the Boy-Who-Lived would certainly get her expelled.

A few people laughed; Harry caught Seamus's eye, and Seamus winked. Professor Snape was NOT amused.

"Sit down, Potter." he snapped. "Twenty points from Gryffindor. Never again accuse others to cover your own incompetence."

Potter suddenly blanched and stared at Valeria in horror. Apparently, he hadn't been trying to imply anything of the sort but she didn't feel up to offering absolution. That's what you get when you speak out without thinking.

"Miss Campbell, if you would answer the question?" Professor Snape had given her permission to speak and she'd missed it! If Potter's behavior made her lose any points she'd kill him. Slowly.

"Monkswood and Wolfsbane are the same plant, sir. It also goes by the name of aconite." She took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself. "It is a highly poisonous plant and the main ingredient of the Wolfsbane potion, a recent discovery that eases the symptoms of Lycanthropy."

"Indeed." Professor Snape said seriously. "Well? Why aren't you all copying that down?" The whole class scrambled to find ink and paper. After that, professor Snape had them making the simple boil-curing potion, the same one Valeria had tried in practice weeks ago. Despite some lingering fury, her previous experience helped her to complete the potion perfectly. It was one of the two she did, the other being Malfoy. They were the only two professor Snape didn't criticize heavily. Then again, even the simplest potions could prove highly dangerous. A single mistake could prove disastrous and thus you had to triple-check every step of the process and not do anything unless you were certain you were meant to. Case in point, as Valeria was finishing her own and Daphne's potion, Neville's and Seamus' cauldron melted into a twisted blob and their potion spread across the floor, burning holes in peoples' shoes. Valeria and Daphne quickly retreated, taking their finished potion along, cauldron and all.

Idiot boy!" snarled professor Snape, clearing the spilled potion away with one wave of his wand. "I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?" Neville whimpered as boils started to pop up all over his nose. "Take him up to the hospital wing," he spat at Seamus. Then he rounded on Potter and Weasley, who had been working next to Neville. "You — Potter — why didn't you tell him not to add the quills? Thought he'd make you look good if he got it wrong, did you? That's another point you've lost for Gryffindor." This was a bit unfair, true, but Valeria wasn't feeling charitable enough to excuse it. Potter opened his mouth to argue, but Weasley kicked him behind their cauldron. "Don't push it," he muttered, "I've heard Snape can turn very nasty." Well, what did he expect? They were in a class where they practically cooked explosives, corrosives and even bioweapons over a fire! If the professor did not demand perfection he woul be doing his job wrong... and risking their lives and limbs to boot.

As they climbed the steps out of the dungeon an hour later, Valeria felt a bit regretful. It wasn't her fault, not primarily, but she'd lost a potential friend that day, and another one was down with potion-induced burns and boils. She resolved not to lose another friend no matter who interfered. Decision made, she set a course for the hospital wing.

 **...**


	6. Friends and Foes

**Finally, we've reached the chapter where we can further break from the original plot while I showcase one of Valeria's worse flaws. It had been hinted at since chapter one but this is the first time it comes to the foreground of the story. Several people had been worried about following the book too closely in reviews. I couldn't say anything before because I didn't want to spoil things but now this is here, I feel I must clarify. "Following the books" won't mean the story is bound to end up the same. It only means that any plot points Valeria's existence could not have affected are still here. The first lessons and the train ride still happened as they did due to external events but other canon points are about to be thoroughly butchered and it's only the first week. Who knows? By year's end Potter and co might not even succeed with the Stone!** **BTW, minor point on the previous chapter; it's not that the teachers are more competent. It is that they're teaching Slytherin and acting differently than they did with Gryffindor. That's especially true in the case of Quirrelmort but Sprout as well. She is, after all, the same Sprout that used Devil's Snare, mandrakes and other very _lethal_ plants in the Battle of Hogwarts.**

 **Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J. Rowling. I'm just using it for a fun but profit-free story.**

"Hey there Neville. How are you holding up?" The infirmary was a clean room all in white, the familiar smells of antiseptic and freshly washed and ironed sheets permeating the air. Multiple easily-accessible cabinets full of various potions and remedies took up one wall, while several hospital beds filled up the remaining space, white curtains providing privacy to patients rather than separate rooms. It looked surprisingly like a muggle hospital. From what Valeria had read, wizarding healers could fix scrapes, cuts, lacerations or even broken and shattered bones with some quick spells, or fight off any normal disease - including the common cold - as well as regrow bones, replenish blood and regenerate damaged organs with the right potion. What they really needed a hospital wing for was magical damage; even something as simple as Neville's potions accident would be beyond muggle medicine entirely, let alone the results of jinxes, tranformations and enchantments gone wrong. The differences from muggle hospitals were subtle but there as well; no diagnostic tools, no oxygen or anaesthetic supplies. Half an hour of observation and a few questions to Madam Pomfrey, the diminutive but fierce matron, gave Valeria an idea on just how esoteric the field of healing magic was.

"'m fine..." Neville said tiredly. He obviously wasn't; fading remains of the huge boils his exploding potion had caused still marked his face and hands. His skin was pale too, and the deadness in his voice hinted at his exhaustion and despondency. Valeria could understand the former, but the latter baffled her.

"Sure you are." she said with a snort. "That's why you're still in the hospital wing, right?" Neville mumbled something she didn't quite catch and turned away from her. Valeria frowned and walked around the hospital bed so she could face him again.

"'m horribl' at potions..." the boy finally admitted. Valeria laughed at that; she couldn't help it. Neville went red in the face and the first hints of a scowl appeared. Good; anger was useful. Far better than hopelessness in any case.

"Did you attend the same class I did?" When he didn't respond she continued. "Half the students ruined their potions in the first ten minutes. Crabbe and Goyle somehow managed to turn theirs into black tar and Potter and Weasley's smelled like a dungbomb halfway through."

"didn't melt the cauldron..." The rest of Neville's responce devolved into indistinct muttering about how useless he was.

"A single mistake at the very last step of the process, Neville!" She retorted. "Think about it. Till then your potion was as good as mine - or Malfoy's."

"P-professor Sn-nape..." he begun to stutter but Valeria would have none of it.

"He neither took points nor gave you detention." She shook her head. Neville's problem wasn't professor Snape; it was his own lack of confidence. Apparently though, the easy way wasn't working with him. The more she tried to convince him the worse he became. It was time for something... drastic.

"Stop this whining at once!" She said, putting anger into her words. The boy looked stricken but Valeria kept talking; it was for his own good. "I can't have you keep melting cauldrons and disrupting the class. Tomorrow, nine o'clock. Meet me in the abandoned classroom, left side, second corridor, halfway to the Great Staircase. And bring your potions kit."

"B-but..."

"No buts, Longbottom." She forced a scowl into her face. If a friendly chat didn't work on him, there were always other ways. "Abandoned classroom, left side, second corridor, with your potions kit, nine o' clock sharp. Fail to come and I will find you. And then it'll really be your butt."

Keeping her scowl up for appearrances despite Madam Pomfrey's disapproving stare, Valeria strode out of the hospital wing. Browbeating Neville into a tutoring session with her would certainly upset him but he didn't see any other way to help him. It beat trying to be friendly and supportive while he became more and more timid and despodent, anyway. It wouldn't be easy but she hoped he'd eventually see what she'd done, after her tutoring pushed him to improve. Not to mention the other benefits. She couldn't wait to try them out so she made a beeline for the second corridor. Seeing if that class needed anything before their session tomorrow was best done in advance, after all.

 **...**

 _"Furnunculus!"_

Valeria missed the last step as a series of sharp pains bit into her right hand like hot knives, and fell on her face at the bottom of the staircase. She was lucky she had as the second curse flew overhead, a boy's voice high with excitement having shouted _"Locomotor Mortis!"_ even as she fell. Paying no attention to her right hand that was quickly growing boils the size of peas from the Pimple Jinx, Valeria grabbed her wand with her left hand and rolled to face her attacker.

She'd been coming down to the dungeons after checking the space for the tutoring session tomorrow. The room had been abandoned for so long a thick layer of dust and cobwebs coated the floor, and only a couple of rotten piles of wood that might or might not have once been desks littered the space. There was lots of room left for potions-brewing, assuming they were careful not to throw fire or dangerous chemicals all over the place. But on her way back to the Slytherin common room, she bumped onto a new... complication.

"Is it true what Pansy said, Campbell?" Draco Malfoy ground out in his usual arrogant nasal tone. "Are you a dirty mudblood?" For once he was without the usual heavy escort; Valeria couldn't see Crabbe or Goyle anywhere. Malfoy didn't seem worried at all that her own wand pointed at his face. Maybe he didn't believe the "dirty mudblood" could be any kind of threat to him?

"Aren't Slytherins supposed to show a united front in public?" she asked, playing for time. She'd counted on exactly that to avoid problems with her housemates during the day, and the enchantments on the girl's dormitories that prevented entry to boys during the night. The older Slytherin girls wouldn't cause trouble if they took after Gemma and if Pansy wanted to... well, she could handle one annoying brat.

"Mudbloods can't be Slytherins!" Malfoy spat. Then he snorted derisively and spoke slowly, as if to a four-year-old. "Besides, I put Crabbe and Goyle as lookouts. If anybody comes we scram and blame it on the Gryffindors." Not as stupid as he appeared to be, was he? There was a reason he was in Slytherin. Though Valeria couldn't for the life of her say why Crabbe and Goyle were. If brains were bagels, they'd have the hole.

"The sorting hat put me here Malfoy." Valeria said angrily. "I got as much right..."

 _"Mimblewimble!"_

Suddenly, Valeria's mouth felt dry and sluggish and try as she might she could not say anothing other than an indistinct mutter.

"Mudbloods don't have rights." Malfoy angrily proclaimed. Were she not on the receiving end, Valeria would have been impressed with the number of curses he knew. She had only learned a single one yet and he'd used three in quick succession. "You get your dirty self out of my house before you pollute it if you know what's good for you." She could only scowl at him impotently. She was furious, but mostly at herself. Why had she not immediately retaliated while she still had her chance? Now she was at Malfoy's hands and could do nothing about it. And...

The sound of running feet came up the stairs and Malfoy looked behind him, annoyed. "Well mudblood..." he said conversationally "...seems it's your lucky day." He bent low and whispered in her ear. "But there will be other days." With that parting shot, he strutted up the starcase, his whole stance displaying his arrogance. Valeria lay there cradling her hurting, boil-covered hand, still unable to talk. At that moment she wanted nothing more than to punch in Malfoy's face until he begged for mercy. And then keep punching him anyway.

 **...**

"Are you OK?" Daphne asked haughtily as she and Tracey walked into the hospital wing. The tall blonde's face only showed curiosity as she examined the fading marks in Valeria's right hand. Tracey on the other hand looked angry.

"I'm fine." Valeria waved off their scrutiny. "But I am murdering Malfoy at the first opportunity." she growled, not bothering to hide her anger. There had been bullies in her old school; many had targeted her for being a bookworm - once. Her mother's protests aside, ensuring no repeaqt performances ha been thoroughly satisfying. "It's going to be slow. And painful. There'll be stories about his horrible end people will fearfully whisper to eachother many years in the future." Tracey giggled. Daphne didn't.

"This is hardly a laughning matter." The taller blonde said with a sigh. "You're a mud... muggleborn in the one house that sees them as vermin. If not for a lucky accident, you'd be having worse problems already."

"What lucky accident?" Valeria asked, ignoring the slip. Daphne was so much the perfect pureblood princess she must have been taught pureblood supremacy from the cradle. She suspected the only reason she was vaguely pleasant to her was a close friendship with Tracey before they even went to Hogwarts. Tracey being a halfblood must have relaxed Daphne's bias over the years.

"Your surname. The Campbells are a known pureblood family." The two girls took up seats on either side of her. "Several of them went into professional Quidditch and they own a high-quality distillation business." Daphne paused, hints of discomfort showing through her usual nonexpression. "When we met I thought... I took you for one of them. By the time Pansy looked into it and revealed you weren't..." She cleared her throat. "We already knew you for a week. You're very good with magic too, and not clueless like other... muggleborn. We... Tracey and I liked you already. And... much of the House doesn't believe Pansy's claims. They can't believe the sorting hat would..."

"Pollute Slytherin like that?" Valeria said drily. "Heard it from Malfoy already. He had no problem believing Pansy, either."

"They're childhood friends." Tracey piped up. "There are rumors about some arrangement between their families, too."

"Malfoy is... disagreeable." Daphne said with distaste, giving the impression she would say something far worse if only it did not clash with her sense of propriety. "Uncouth and of little skill, he relies more on his family's influence and wealth than his own accomplishments." She scowled. "But that influence is... considerable. And he's a blind bigot. My suggestion would be to speak to professor Snape. Given his own... background, he might be amenable to any appeals and he might be the only one capable of diffusing the situation before it escalates."

Valeria got the feeling the tall blonde knew a great deal she was still unwilling to share. She didn't understand what Daphne meant about professor Snape's background but given the access to high-society gossip the pureblood families had, she would not discount any insights into their professor's character, however unusual they were. On the other hand...

"No."

"What do you mean, no?" Daphne said sharply. "You won't survive in the Snake Pit if you let Malfoy roll over you while you take it like a brainless badger. And you can't fight him off like foolhardy lion; he has too many allies. Slytherin values self-preservation for a reason, you know!"

"We also value doing anything to achieve our goals." Valeria said with a still angry growl. "And I never cared about the rules."

 **...**

Saturday morning found Valeria leaving the Slytherin common room in a hurry. Her first stop was the library. After checking out two books on herbology and potions, she ran to the Great Hall for breakfast and stocking up. She wouldn't be coming back for lunch; too much work. After that, she climbed up to the second floor and her 'date' with Neville. Upon entry however, she was ambushed by two more people than she'd been expecting.

"What are you doing here, Potter, Weasley?" she asked with more than a hint of annoyance as Neville half-cowered behind the duo.

"We're stopping your bullying of Neville right now." Potter said determinedly. Weasley nodded eagerly; he'd probably come along to heroically fight off a slimy snake as Gryffindors were wont to do, rather than a desire to help. Though she could be wrong - stranger things had happened.

"Bullying?" Valeria asked, rolling her eyes. "Way to go, charging ahead without all the facts. How like a typical Lion." Weasley scowled but Potter considered her words. She saved him the effort by continuing with her explanation. "I'll be tutoring him in potions. You can't claim he doesn't need it."

"Why would you do that?" he asked. Translation: what was in it for you? Refreshing to find a Gryffindor who could think, even if the House bias was rubbing off of him. Maybe she'd have a bit of fun at the boys' expense.

"Because fewer disruptions during the lesson mean we'll learn more? Because I want to prevent the whole class being splashed with the contents of the next cauldron to explode? Because fewer headaches for my head of House due to my actions might net me considerations? Because Neville is my friend?" She shrugged. "There you go; four reasons, each tailored to fit a different House. Pick the one you like best and take it with you, as you leave us alone to do our work without distractions."

Potter shook his head. "Not going to happen, Campbell. We're staying here and keeping an eye on you. If you want to help Neville, good. But you aren't staying alone with him."

"Suit yourselves." Valeria replied. "Neville, come here. Have you brought your potions kit as we discussed?" He nodded and took the items out of his purse. Given his usual behavior, it was easy to forget Neville was the heir of an Ancient house, with all the resources that gave access to. "Good. We'll repeat the boil-curing potion. Read the instructions carefully, prepare all the materials step-by-step and once you have everything ready just follow the recipe."

The following forty minutes passed quietly as Neville worked, Potter and Weasley watched, and Valeria kept an eye on them while practicing on some spells. Neville absentmindedly forgot a step in the recipe twice but turning the mild stinging hex she'd been practicing on him jogged his memory, averted disaster, and drew howls of outrage out of the two observers.

"You think I'm being too harsh?" the short blonde witch asked in a dangerous voice. "Should I have let the cauldron explode in his face, the boiling liquid burning him and the magic of the potion sending him into the hospital wing for another day?" She turned to the blond boy who was looking at her with a mixture of surprise, gratefulness and apprehension. "Tell me something Neville. How many of the plants in Greenhouse one can send you to the hospital wing if you're not careful?"

"S-six..." He didn't even have think about it. The rumors were right; he was very good in that subject.

"Uhuh. Now, think about it. In a week or two we'll be starting on levitation spells in charms. What will happen if someone accidentally levitates you out a window?" The boys paled. Apparently they had never considered the risks of an innocuous, first-year spell.

"Magic is dangerous." She stated. "A first-year spell or potion can cripple. When professor Snape is calling you dunderheads in class he's not doing it for his own perverse amusement." Well, not merely for that. She'd not refuse her Head of House a harmless vice or three. He was a Slytherin, after all. "He's saving life and limb. It's the teachers who don't warn you who aren't doing their jobs." The rest of the tutoring lesson went on in near-silence. In the end, Neville managed to brew a near-perfect boil-curing potion and was happy about it and a pair of Gryffindors had several things to think about. She'd call that a success.

She sent the three of them off with a few words of praise for Neville that would build up his confidence. Once all curious eyes were away, she had her own potion to brew.

 **...**

The azure fire burned merrily beneath the pot, the liquid bubbling and hissing as the fourth slug was dropped in. _Ignis Algens_ , or Coldfire in English, was one of only two spells in the Herbology textbook and not required reading. As such, few first-years bothered with it at all. Valeria thought that was short-sighted in the extreme. The small, blue, smokeless flames could provide selective heating, be carried in one's bare hands, and only burned easily flammable materials that weren't alive. Its usefulness in a greenhouse would be as significant as the sunlight-creation charm, especially during the winter months.

Despite its simplicity, she'd struggled with the minor charm for several days before succeeding; her wand tended to spit out the far more dangerous dancing red flames unless she were very careful. After over a week of using the thick Cherry implement she was beginning to understand Ollivanders' words of caution; with it, magic came eagerly to her call, but accuracy and control started from problematic and went worse from there.

But with this little experiment in an abandoned classroom at the second corridor, a bit stronger fire wasn't an issue. In fact, as she reached the critical point, she cast the incantation again, doubling the heat. The pot wasn't the cheap pewter one from her school kit, after all. Praying the mixture didn't simply explode in her face, she added several porcupine quills. The reaction was immediate; the liquid boiled and acrid fumes that stung her nose and eyes hissed from it. She kept it into the fire, repeating Neville's little mistake from their morning potions class with a vengeance. The heat-resistant, corrossion-proof ceramic pot from her old chemistry set held. Snuffing out the flames and letting it cool off a bit, she secured the lid and with dragonhide-clad hands put it into her purse; it barely fit in the cheap extended space. Then she walked back down to the dungeons and waited for nightfall...

 **...**

The Slytherin girl's dormitories, like those of other houses in the school, had been heavily enchanted for comfort and security. Many forms of dark magic were reported. Outsiders with evil intent were barred from entry. Boys into the girls' rooms were prohibited. That Hogwarts' defenses had been created by a wizard and not by a witch became evident when Valeria sneaked into they boys' rooms in the middle of the night without issue. With their year having the smallest number of students of any other in recent memory, it only took her moments to find Malfoy's bed, even in near-darkness. Taking out her Cherry and dragon heartstring wand, she aimed at him from point-blank range and whispered the incantation to the only curse she knew. Malfoy -hell, most Slytherin first years- knew more than she did. They could make their victims sprout boils, stick their feet to the ground, lock their legs together, curse off their hair or ability to speak or any number of other painful or unsavoury spells.

Valeria on the other hand preferred the Full-Body-Bind. Ever since she'd read about it in the Defense textbooks, she'd decided it was the most useful of the Grade 1 offensive spells. Not as flashy or painful as the curses other Slytherins preferred, perhaps, and easier to end. But it had its uses - and how. She smirked nastily down at the sleeping Malfoy heir as she said _"Petrificus Totalus"_ under her breath. Having his limbs stuck to his body didn't quite wake him up but even if it had, it would already be too late. She whispered the curse a few more times to make sure it took well and would last for some time and then went to work.

The pot full of intentionally misbrewed potion came out of her purse and she spilled a generous amount down Malfoy's torso. The liquid hissed as it begun to dissolve the sheets, just as it had done in potions class with the shoes of several unfortunate students. Malfoy's eyes opened wide in shock and pain but with the curse already in place he could neither scream nor flee. And in the near-darkness, with her under robe and cloak with the hood drawn low, there was no way for him to recognize her. She spilled some more potion on his arms and legs, and added a tiny splash to his golden hair. Making sure no potion reached his face or throat, her smirk widened as boils begun to cover his newly-revealed skin. Pausing only for a moment to admire her handiwork, she then walked over to Crabbe's and Goyle's beds and repeated the process then struck them all a few more times with the Full-Body-Bind and snuck out of the dormitory.

 **...**

Sunday morning, the Slytherins woke up to screams of agony. Prefects ran into the first year boys' dormitory then quickly scrambled out. Blaise Zabini, the cute boy with the easy smile, gleaming eyes and unruly hair, was busy figuratively puking his guts out as Professor Snape arrived. He went to Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle and stunned them back into unconsciousness; it was a mercy. Moments later, he stalked out of the Slytherin common room wordlessly, with three unrecognizable boys floating behind him. Most of Slytherin stared at the victims, a few discussing in quiet words what kind of dark magic could do that to their fellow students.

Valeria tried hard to hide her smirk. It would not do to be discovered right after her success and lose all the Malfoy-free days that were coming up. Neville had been exposed to a small amount of an accidental potions mishap for a couple minutes before receiving treatment to a known ailment - and he'd been out of commission for half a day. The so-called Slytherin prince and his minions had been coated with a third of a cauldron each, brewed to be stronger than Neville's accident, the Full-Body-Bind at the dead of night ensuring hours of uninterrupted exposure before help could reach them. Hours during which they were fully awake but had no working mouth with which to scream. Ambush her in the stairs to bully her about her blood purity, would they? Too bad for them Valeria absolutely refused to be a victim and gleefully reciprocated. And unlike them, she knew never to deal a small wound to an enemy.

She was rather proud to be in Slytherin. If she would not be welcomed or accepted, then being feared would do.

 **...**


	7. Chance Encounters

**Small chapter this time, lots of fluff and some bits of the old plot still there. A bit sick, otherwise would have posted this a day or two ago. Tried to work some more of the girls' personalities and past into it. Also, showing Valeria's differences from canon Hermione.**

 **Disclaimer: everything belongs to Rowling. Including but not limited to, Harry Potter, the Potterverse, forty-two bazillion royalties and the answer to life, the universe and everything.**

Before she knew it, Valeria had already enjoyed over a month of bully-free Slytherin. It wasn't that nobody wanted to make trouble for the "filthy mudblood"; most people in the Snake Pit simply had more important things to worry about than an unconfirmed rumor about a first-year - especially one they weren't certain they wanted to believe in the first place. Lucius Malfoy had charged through the Great Hall monday morning after his son's little 'potions mishap', fury evident in his pale, aristocratic face. He'd spent the entire morning arguing with the headmaster, Madam Pomfrey and even professor Snape. By sundown, Malfoy Junior and his minions had been evacuated to St. Mungo's and the rumor mill was afire discussing who had received what threats from the powerful pureblood family and how agonizingly gruesome their final fate would be. Several older students from families allied to the Malfoys were walking on eggshells after failing to protect three allied scions from an attack within their own House and most of the rest were trying everything in their power to escape the attention of a very angry Head of Slytherin.

On September the 12th, the Slytherin and Gryffindor first years had their first flying lesson under the hawklike gaze of Rolanda Hooch, a middle-aged, athletic witch whose grey, perpetually wind-swept hair proudly declared she'd been born on a broom. Figuratively, Valeria hoped - though given wizardkind's general lack of common sense everything was possible. Neville had fallen off his broom during the lesson and Theo Nott, Pansy Parkinson, Parvati Patil and Ron Weasley made a scene out of it. As luck would have it, calmer heads prevailed when Potter talked to the two irate Gryffindors and several stinging hexes somehow found their way to Theo and Pansy's backsides. The lesson continued when Madam Hooch returned from the infirmary; Potter outflew everyone by a mile but on average purebloods did better than the rest and boys did better than girls. Valeria shrugged and chucked it up to prior experience and inclination, respectively. She barely managed a sedate pace herself, though she did better than Pansy who couldn't sit on her broom right.

Her classes were coming along nicely. Cramming as much practice as she was able between the less interesting theoretical homework and all the classes that required little spellcasting, she was trying to improve her magical ability and mostly succeeding. The simpler transfigurations now took less than a minute instead of the fifteen they had at the beginning of term or the hour and a half of her first attempts in the summer. Color-changing and wand-lighting charms no longer caused her any fatigue or headaches at all, and practicing them with Tracey and Daphne was loads of fun; clothes, jewels, hair, nails, even eyes and lips could be easily and cleanly altered with a touch of a wand... though she'd noticed the other girls couldn't give the colors on the last two meaningful durations. Control on the other hand still came hard to her. Unless she'd done a charm many dozens of times, having it do exactly as she wanted failed as often as not. The first time she'd tried to change Tracey's eye color she'd made her skin green for over an hour and none of them could reverse it, while each time she tried to levitate her feather she'd invariably cause either the desk or one of her two friends to float six inches off the ground. The one time she'd grown angry and snapped the incantation out, she'd smashed the desk into the ceiling hard enough to break and nobody would sit with her in Charms for days.

The more academic classes came easier, even if they were a bit boring. For first-years it was still mostly memorization of their textbooks, and being accustomed to reading more than most she had little trouble. After the first two weeks though, she noticed something curious. In all the classes they shared with Ravenclaw, Padma Patil was making a serious effort to respond to any and all questions posed by their professors. In all classes they shared with Gryffindor, that role was taken up by her sister Parvati instead. In both cases, in any lesson the dark-haired, dark-skinned girls would manage to answer more questions than she did, they'd look straight at her afterwards and smile smugly. Their little contest was well into its third week by the time the rest of Slytherin took notice and another week had passed before Daphne rolled her eyes after a rather heated quizzing session in professor Snape's dungeon and drew her and Tracey into an empty classroom.

"When are you and the Patils going to drop it?" she asked without preamble. "It's becoming... undignified."

"Dunno." Valeria shrugged. "Can't have them getting more points for their houses than I am for Slytherin. Besides, winning points makes me useful. A lower likelihood of becoming a target would be nice. If the rest of our peers ever get their thumbs out of their backsides on the Malfoy situation, that is."

"The correct terminology is 'arses'." Tracey supplied helpfully. All three of them giggled, though Daphne seemed a bit scandalized to have joined in.

"Whatever." She said hautily. "You two remind me to share a little secret come year's end, will you?" Tracey and Valeria followed her back to the common room, wondering what she meant.

 **...**

"This doesn't look like homework." Tracey commented one friday afternoon the three of them were in the library. She and Daphne had been doing some research on fabrication charms which, strangely enough, the brunette had suggested herself. Not being as academically inclined as Valeria or as socially required to master magic as Daphne was due to noble blood, Tracey was usually more focused on listening to the Hogwarts rumor mill and performing acts of social subterfuge. As such, her suggestion came as somewhat of a surprise. After hours of uncovering interesting facts about the limitations of transfiguration in fulfilling everyday needs and why charms that shaped and processed materials were invented, an awkward Tracey had finally admitted the Davis family business focused precisely on processing, storage and transportation of magical goods. She'd simply been curious about how precisely it was done.

"Nope!" Valeria replied as she noted down the knife animation charm. "It's a list."

"Eighty feet of parchment and going?" Daphne shook her head. "Must be some list. At least your quill has a dictation mode."

"And yours doesn't?" Valeria asked with one eyebrow climbing towards her hairline. "Whyever not?"

"A lady's letters should always be unique and impeccable." The tall blonde finished her own note-taking with an elaborate flourish and closed the heavy tome she'd been reading. "That's what Mother always said. No magic quills for me..." She gave them such a long-suffering look that Tracey and Valeria burst into giggles. "Now, what about that list?"

"It's a spell list." the other blonde said. "At least half an hour a day I rapidly skim through the library books and log each new spell I find, along with a description of what it does and where it was found. If I stumble upon new spells during normal reading, I log them too." Valeria frowned at the massive library around them. "Hogwarts' library is awesome but enormous! There must be tens of thousands of spells here, from the useless to awesome. Since we can't learn them all, I'm prioritizing."

"Found anything good?" Tracey asked curiously.

"Nothing we can cast yet." Valeria admitted and the other two groaned.

"OK, that's enough studying for now." Daphne stated in a voice that booked no argument. "All work and no play makes pureblood princesses throw pushy muggleborns off the Astronomy tower." She sat up, straightened her long silver-blonde mane and looked down at her shorter companions.

"That's an awfully specific proverb." Valeria said as she considered it. They had been reading for hours, yes... why not? Valeria grunted as she lifted a stack of tomes and manuals they'd been using and tried to remember where they should be filed.

"True though." Tracey was all too happy to leave the books she'd been using as they were. Madam Pince could sort them out with a flick of her wand after all. She only made sure not to snap the spines or drop anything liquid or edible on the pages.

"Here's an idea..." Valeria finally said. "How do you girls feel about exploration?"

 **...**

Venturing out into the unknown, or a magically enchanted, ever-shifting, perpetually rearranging castle merited a lot of preparation. The first thing the girls did were to sleep early and wake up really late. Surreptitiously questioning the upper-years and especially the fairly friendly Gemma Farley, the fifth year prefect that was ostensibly in charge of the first-year girls, had yielded useful information. Prefects and teachers adhered to schedules and only patrolled so late; they too had to sleep, incredible as that may appear to ickle firsties. Only the caretaker habitually went out in random hours of the night; Filch's chronic insomnia and atrocious disposition had made him the terror of children from all corners of wizarding Britain. But even a problem of such magnitude must have a solution and the three girls intended to find it. The second step was camouflage. Hoods would defend their identities against casual observers and portraits alike. A threadbare (but clean!) sock worn overhead would blur their features even from direct sight. And the right clothing borrowed among them, worn with the right padding, would blur their figures enough so they wouldn't be immediately recognized. Finally, spellwork for subterfuge and amusement. Color-changing charms on their robes turning them red and gold. The softening charm they'd just learned on their shoes to muffle and absorb their footsteps. And making sure they had good grasp of the basic locking and unlocking spells just in case.

They left the dungeons at two in the morning with all due caution, dodging behind every suit of armor and looking with a hand mirror before turning around any corners. Slowly but steadily they approached all those places they weren't allowed to venture into under the watchful eye of teachers and prefects alike. They went to the kitchens and liberated a heap of food and drink from the undeniably helpful house-elves. Not only was that Valeria's first encounter with yet another intelligent species but also her first taste of both butterbeer and firewhiskey. She decided she preferred the latter, even if it burned her throat and they found only enough for a sip.

They also went to the library and checked out one or two books from the restricted section. They didn't sign their names of course, and Daphne had some experience with what kind of books were obviously cursed. They chose a tome on advanced curses and another one on potent potions and put them away into separate extendable purses. They'd rather copy the recipes and incantations on their free time than peruse them while in the library and rist getting caught. It wasn't as if they'd be immediately missed; how often did other students read _Moste Potente Potions_ anyway?

After much thought, some hissed arguments and a unanimous decision in the interest of personal safety over curiosity they decided not to explore the third-floor corridor. Headmaster Dumbledore must have had a very good reason for warning everyone off, even if it must have caused the opposite reactions in most of the student body; they didn't want to fall head-first into some sort of trap. Not without a...

 _"Ickle firsties out of bed at this hour? Naughty!"_ the sweetly dangerous voice of the school's resident poltergeist said as the three of them stopped dead in their tracks. " _Oooh, no faces!"_ Peeves continued. " _Naughty indeed. Tell papa peeves wha' mischeif you managed!"_

"Aw fuc...fudge." Tracey exclaimed. The three of them had met the poltergeist before, and where Peeves went havoc soon followed.

 _"Oooo... language! Come tell Papa Peeves the Minister's real name!_

Valeria's brain was working overtime to find a solution to this new problem when she stumbled into one that might solve more than one issue.

"Say Peeves, how about a deal?" The poltergeist tilted his head till he was looking at them upside-down but Daphne elbowed Valeria's ribs hard. Valeria ignored her. "You do something for us and we deal with Filch for tonight. Sounds fun?"

 **...**

Daphne was strongly against the plan, Tracey was undecided and Valeria was all for it. One should support one's own ideas, after all. Somehow that ended up meaning the motion had been voted on and approved so now they were looking for Filtch and his cat.

 _'Come now dear, smell them, hunt them! Stupid students out of their beds must be here. Potter and Weasley ain't hardly the only...'_

The three girls paused to listen to the caretaker's voice as he talked to his cat. Mental, right?

 _'...see how they squealed when they got detention? Won't be running outside after hours again will they?'_

The voice was getting closer. Using a mirror, Valeria spotted Filch around another corner and grabbed for her wand. A few flicks and a whispered incantation later, Filch and his never-to-be-sufficiently-damned feline were flat on the floor, limbs locked, mouths sealed. "And that's how you deal with an annoying squib." Valeria murmured to them smugly. "Terror of Hogwards. Please!" The full-body-bind should hold them for hours. Time to get back to Peeves.

A few minutes later, the three were standing on a certain corridor on a certain floor before a locked door, poltergeist in tow.

"OK Peeves, this is it." Valeria said. "We took care of Filch. Now you can see what's behind this door for us?"

 _"Papa Peeves see for ickle firsties!"_ The poltergeist readily agreed and glided through the door as if it weren't there. About a minute later, he was back.

 _"Papa Peeves went, saw, conquered. AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"_ Valeria winced at the loud laughter. Bound caretaker or no bound caretaker, someone was bound to notice them and soon. But someone already dead - or who was never alive to begin with - would fare much better against certain death than three little girls would.

"Well?" she asked impatiently. "What did you see?"

 _"Peeves saw... nothing good. GOT YOUR CONK!'_ the poltergeist exclaimed as he grabbed and pulled Valeria's nose till the girl fell off-balance and onto the floor. Then he disappeared with the sound of an obese goblin relieving himself after too many beans. Daphne shook her head in exasperation and Tracey giggled.

"We'll remember this!" Tracey said with mirth. "Proof that no matter how smart you are, you can still outsmart yourself with your own plans."

Valeria followed the others back to the Slytherin dungeons thoroughly disappointed...


	8. Of feasts and plots

**The plot thickens! By the way, Feather-light charms are canon but the incantation is unknown. I invented one that literally reads "feather-weight" in Latin for this story. With Valeria now having studied magic for four months, expect more of it per chapter. Also, taking bets in how long it'll take the girls to get involved with Potter and co. :)**

 **Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J. Rowling. Any attempts at using magic to change that will fail because such magic also belongs to J. Rowling.**

October the 31st arrived to find the entire castle in a festive atmosphere. Giant pumpkins provided by Hagrid and animated by Professor Flitwick decorated every hall and archway. Bats made out of sugar and chocolate that actually flew were in evidence at great numbers and any students who could grab one were free to eat it - but doing so with magic could have unexpected results. Random pranks went off during the day, turning peoples' hair green or their robes itchy or their shoes insult them at every step. And the ghosts and Peeves didn't disappoint; walking around the castle that day was not for the faint of heart.

Valeria had been curious about the meaning of the holiday for wizardkind. It turned out that it was both a seasonal celebration, as per the original Gaelic Samhain, and a day when humor and ridicule was used to momentarily stave off the fear and sadness of death, as per the original All Hallows Eve. Much like their muggle counterparts, her fellow young witches and wizards were largely ignorant of the holiday's original purpose and treated it as a great time to have fun without reprisals from their supposed guardians. That attitude baffled the blonde Slytherin, especially with two entire branches of magic dealing with arithmantic and semantic influences on magic itself. Moreover, wasn't that the day the recent Wizarding War ended only a little over a decade ago?

The day culminated with with a huge feast to rival the one at the start of the year. She, Tracey and Daphne had taken their customary seats at the Slytherin table and were having one of their usual arguments about food.

"I'm just sayin'..." the small brunette said conversationally as the food appeared on their plates. "...you two are being unreasonable. All this culinary heaven is being provided for us. How could you possibly ignore it?" She took a huge bite out of the meat pie she had at hand just to demonstrate.

"Keep eating like that and you'll soon be the size of Goyle." Daphne said cattily as she took a dainty bite out of her own meal and washed it down with pumpkin juice. The blonde heiress could make even eating look elegant.

"Don't look at me." Valeria rolled her eyes as Tracey did just that, an obviously false expression of betrayal on her face. "I'm only here because it's officially required. I usually pack some cheese and bread for later and then..."

"Spend the rest of your time in the library?" Tracey finished with a smirk. "By the time we graduate you'll look like Madam Pince."

"That's still better than Goyle." Valeria smirked back. The argument was about to continue when Professor Quirrel came into the Great Hall. He crossed the cathedral-sized chamber at a dead run, almost losing his purple turban in the process, and practically collapsed before Dumbledore's throne at the staff table.

"Troll — in the dungeons — thought you ought to know." He then sank to the floor in a dead faint. There was an immediate uproar as six hundred students all tried to shout questions, get off their seats and run, or hide beneath the tables all at the same time. Several purple flashes from headmaster Dumbledore's wand that roared like thunderbolts in the enclosed space quickly restored order.

"Prefects!" he said, his voice loud but unhurried "Lead your Houses back to the dormitories immediately!"

Gemma immediately gathered the Slytherin girls for the first three years and led them towards the staircase that led to the dungeons. The rest of their House, being older and less panicky, was already marching ahead.

"Girls, I need to speak to professor Snape." Valeria said as she and the other two fell to the end of the line.

"Whatever for?" Daphne asked in surprise. "What can't wait until after the emergency?"

"The emergency itself." Valeria said with a frown. "Why are we going to our dormitory when both it and the troll are in the dungeons?"

"You aren't telling Gemma." Tracey stated, not alarmed at all. "Is it because you want to keep the point reward to yourself?"

Valeria nodded absently as they separated from the others. The Great Hall had been left all but empty in the students' haste to flee, chairs, food and miscellaneous gear strewn all over the floor. She even saw someone's wand lying forgotten on the Hufflepuff table. The teachers were leaving the Great Hall from the exit that eventually led to the Great Staircase and other ways down to the dungeons than Slytherin House had taken. Valeria was about to call out when she noticed Professor Snape breaking from the group and heading up. Making a decision she hoped she wouldn't come to regret, she took out her wand and whispered.

 _"Spongify! Colovaria! Pennagravitas!"_

Having turned her boots soft as a sponge, given her robes Gryffindor colors and cast a Feather-light charm on herself, she dashed after her Head of House in near-silence. With her every step spanning twenty feet, she was already out of the Great Hall by the time she realized Tracey and Daphne couldn't follow. She'd learned the Feather-light charm during her recent attempts on better controlling levitation and stumbled upon the use she was putting it into when her first casting misfired. But since they'd learn it in class later in the year and the textbook never mentioned that use...

Any doubt or guilt fled her thoughts when she noticed where following professor Snape had taken her. She was in the third floor, near the door that led to the forbidden corridor! What was more, the potions-master was nowhere to be seen, the door stood open, and very loud noises were coming from inside. If she didn't know better (and she really didn't) she'd have sworn they were barks! Hugging the corner, she peeked at the doorway with only one eye. No barking monster was taking a bite out of her, thank you very much! The Sorting Hat had put her in Slytherin for a reason and a combination of ridiculously impressive valor with unbelievably atrophied common sense wasn't it.

What seemed hours later but probably had been less than a minute, a very angry and dishevelled professor Snape jumped out of the door and forced it shut with a spell. His robes were in tatters and he was leaving a trail of blood as he limped away from it. A few more flicks of his wand conjured long strips of gauze and a bottle of muggle antiseptic, which he applied to his left leg to stop the bleeding. He probably wanted a temporary patch until he could get to a healing potion, Valeria thought. But what had he been doing in the "forbidden" third-flood corridor in the first place and what kind of monster lay in it? Come to think of it, why was there a monster in Hogwarts in the first place and how could the headmaster issue an announcement pretty much tailor-made to get every irresponsible student to check it out? Not that she was being stupid herself, following her Head of House when she was supposed to be in the Slytherin common room, no sir! Everything was fine in this madhou... err castle.

Valeria climbed down to the dungeons, careful to avoid wandering trolls or worse, teachers. Unaswered questions plagued her thoughts all the way...

 **...**

"Come on blonde and blonder, get out of my way." Their attacker taunted as he tried to bull through. "It's not as if you could stop me, you two are rubbish on a broom."

If looks could kill, Ronald Weasley would be dead and buried. No, not buried, Valeria thought as she evaluated Daphne's murderous expression. He'd already be an inferius from the sixth-year defense textbook, on his way to off the rest of his family and rid the wizarding world of the Dimwit Rudeginger gene. Nodding at each other, they launched themselves at him simultaneously. He might be taller and heavier but being caught between two angry girls when they hit you from opposite directions at thirty miles an hour was a painful place to be. It was Madam Hooch's fault, really. The hawk-eyed instructor had decided they had improved enough to try their hand at a 'friendly' Quidditch game for their 8th flying lesson. Of course, friendly was relevant when the teams were Gryffindor vs Slytherin. Especially when the actual match between the two Houses' teams had been just last week and Slytherin had trounced Gryffindor by a respectable margin.

The festivities begun when Theodore launched himself against Potter in an attempt to steal the quaffle, failed miserably and crashed his broom. Five minutes later Finnigan drew his wand and set Blaise's broom on fire. Pansy retaliated by casting something at the quaffle that Valeria didn't recognize. When Potter next tried to grab it it stuck in his arms and he could neither drop it nor use his hands to guide his broom. Thomas and Patil charged the Slytherin lines with abandon. Pansy managed to avoid them but Tracey didn't; they knocked her off her broom. Luckily, she had been flying low and avoided serious injury.

"Look at Potter!" Daphne said as the two of them raced away from Weasley with the quaffle before he could hunt them down. Valeria did and winced.

"Looks like someone hexed his broom. You think Hootch will interrupt the game now?"

"No way." The other blonde said with a laugh. "She's having way too much fun at our expense. And she probably thinks if we work out our differences now, we won't be ruining the real matches if we ever join the quidditch team. It's not as if she can't prevent accidents with magic."

It turned out Daphne was wrong about that. Madam Hooch's efforts to counter the hex on Potter's broom proved as fruitless as any attempt to fly close and grab him. In the end, Potter himself jumped off his broom before it got too high and their flying instructor proved herself by grabbing him in mid-air. It was a stomach-turningly foolhardy action on Potter's part, but also changed Valeria's opinion of him for the better. It showed enough presence of mind to recognize the inevitable and radical thinking that turned a potentially lethal situation into a manageable one.

It also was the end to their chaotic lesson. Everyone except Potter and Neville got five points off their House for performing one of the seven hundred recorded fouls in the game rules and everyone who used magic against anyone had another ten points subtracted. The Gryffindors cheered at coming out ahead but the Boy-Who-Lived didn't join in. Valeria noticed only because he was looking at him while deciding whether to approach him; instead of joining the celebration, Harry Potter was frowning as he furiously searched the empty castle windows for something... or someone.

 **...**

"I'm telling you Vi, going sniffing after Snape's business would be bad." Tracey said as the three of them finished their homework and started practicing the actual spells. "You don't want him to get as nasty as when he's dealing with Gryffindors."

"Well, no. But you have to admit it's funny." Valeria cast the Levitation Charm and her feather lifted in a perfectly normal, controlled way. Finally! It had taken months for the desk to quit following it in its aerial acrobatics.

"Funny 'ha ha' or funny peculiar?" Daphne was casually swinging from her bed's roof, holding on with one hand. She'd finally deigned to try out the Feather-light charm herself, despite it being totally undignified. Naturally, she'd spent the last hour trying out totally impossible gymnastics with a wide grin.

"You know what I mean. This school has too many mysteries for my liking. How can we even study when someone is letting Trolls run rampant in here?"

"Nobody asked you to investigate, girl." Daphne commented reasonably. "It wasn't as if we've been put in danger so far. The troll wasn't even in the dungeons!"

"But I need to know!" Valeria whined despite how childish it made her. "And that's another thing. Why would professor Quirrel lie about the troll's whereabouts?"

"Who cares?" Tracey scoffed. "There are far juicier rumors than that. For example, did you know Potter and Weasley got detention with Snape?"

"Really?"

"They got caught running around the castle during the troll incident." Tracey chortled. "You'll never guess what for!"

"OK, Trace, we'll bite." Valeria acquiesced. The brunette loved her rumors and every chance she got to share what she'd uncovered.

"They were after a Gryffindor girl who they saw being left behind!" she exclaimed, nearly bouncing in excitement. "Only, they couldn't explain how all the Gryffindor girls could be safe and accounted for back in their tower. Or knew what she looked like, for that matter."

"Congratulations miss Campbell. Fifty points to Slytherin for successfully deflecting blame on the Boy-Who-Lived and the Weasley ignoramus." Daphne said mock-seriously; her professor Snape impersonation was spot-on.

Valeria groaned at having been seen. Admittedly, it had worked far better than it could have had but she didn't want to rely on luck next time. She had not even noticed she'd been followed! Learning magic was something too precious to lose; she resolved then and there not to interfere again in anything that could get her caught and expelled.


	9. The Return

**One of the things I never liked about the original books is how Harry responded to everyone that treated him badly. While one must admire the determination required to avoid lashing out (even in fictional situations), doing nothing is rarely a good responce - especially where moral disagreement is concerned. If Harry and co would oppose the bigger evils like Riddle, why not do the same for the little ones? It seems strange that Hermione at least would have such a sense of social injustice and willingness to be a crusader that would apply to house elves... but not her own friends.** **On the other hand, violent overreactions are not a solution. Riddle thought so too... and see how he ended up.**

 **Disclaimer: J. Rowling wrote Harry Potter. I'm only writing a (hopefully) fun derivative story based on it.**

 **...**

"Watch out where you're going, mudblood!"

Of all the people in the castle, she had to bump into Draco Malfoy after the morning's transfiguration lesson. Valeria was so surprised at seeing him there and then that no witty comeback came to her as he sneered and marched off while she lay on the floor, intentionally trampling her schoolbag in the process. In hindsight, she should have expected his eventual return. Ailments magic couldn't heal were few and far between and however clever her plan might have been, it had nothing on all the gruesome magics in the books she and her friends had 'liberated' from the library's Restricted section. Besides, Pansy had been unusually uppity and happy during the past week, even going as far as to try and jinx her more than once. Valeria should have noticed but her mind had been on all the recent mysteries, not to mention their transfiguration homework.

All thoughts on switching spells vanished when she noticed the thick black liquid dripping from her schoolbag. Opening it and frantically removing textbooks and class notes, she found her reserve inkwell shattered by Malfoy's latest attack. Cursing the school rules and the dimwit who insisted an inkwell be mandatory even for students with self-inking quills, she carefully used the basic cleaning charm to remove most of the ink from the books' covers and the bag itself. With mounting fury she saw some of her notes had been coated in black too but she didn't dare try cleaning them; with the way her magic surged more often than not she was more likely to erase them entirely or burn them to ash. Daphne had a delicate touch and was far better at household charms than her; maybe she'd know what to do.

 **...**

Any hopes of avoiding unpleasant encounters with other Slytherins had long since faded by the end of the week. Malfoy's sojourn to St. Mungo's may not have made him any worse but it had taught him caution and at least some subtlety for his tactics had shifted considerably. The first incident came up when someone littered the Slytherin common room with copies of certain pages of _Nature's Nobility_ , a wizarding genealogy book. Specifically, pages with the Campbell wizarding family tree, on which Valeria could not be found. Things got progressively worse from there. She had to spend the evening in the hospital wing regrowing her hair after Bridget Jones, a third-year girl incredulous at Valeria being in her house, had hit her with a hair-loss jinx. The following morning, she woke up with red skin and a terrible itch, and an amused Pansy gleefully explaining how Lucian Bole would pay ten galleons to any girl willing to prank her. In potions class Malfoy took the seat Daphne was saving for her and Goyle teamed up with Tracey. Since the other Slytherins and Gryffindors stuck to their own groups, she had to team up with Neville. Unfortunately for Malfoy's expectations for her failure, Neville had improved considerably in their tutoring sessions. In addition, they were brewing herbicide potion that day and Neville was one of the few first years who was better than her in Herbology; their potion turned out suitably potent and foul-smelling to impress even their dour potions-master. Of course, that little setback only led to having to dodge curses in the common room, Montague 'accidentally' tripping her down half a staircase, having her shoes magically glued to the floor and missing dinner and an attempt to steal her trunk by a sixth-year girl she'd never even spoken to before. The would-be thief was found stunned and immobilized Saturday morning and professor Snape had to be called in to restore her. Valeria had never been so thankful she'd bought the expensive, high-security trunk before. If all her possessions had just vanished it would have been a huge setback in her studies. And if someone had discovered the liberated books from the restricted section in her trunk, she would have been expelled.

The worst weren't the curses, the bullying or attempted theft though. It was all the distance forced between her and her friends. Daphne had received a letter from her family only a day after Malfoy's return. Someone had warned them their little girl was making friends with a filthy mudblood - could it possibly be true? They couldn't believe it of her of course but rumors would fly even from innocent coincidences. They advised her to keep her distance and even openly hurt the scum to the limit the school rules allowed so as not to besmirch the honor of the Noble and Ancient House of Greengrass. Tracey on the other hand was a halfblood. Her position in Slytherin and her own family had already been precarious. That was why she'd grown to prefer subterfuge and rumors to a more visible personna - some days people even forgot she was there. But being Valeria's friend had drawn unwanted attention to her, followed by jinxes and bullying by association. She wasn't nearly as much the target Valeria was but as the days of November passed, she hid more and more behind the safety being unseen and unheard provided.

Valeria's life became uglier by the day. Daphne shot whispered warnings against retaliation during the few classes they managed to partner in, insisting that any heavy-handed measures like last time were unlikely to pass unnoticed. Valeria had been surprised the other girl had known she was responsible for Malfoy's fate but in retrospect her friends were neither blind nor naive - and she wasn't exactly a stellar actress to hide her reactions from them. Some of the smugness and satisfaction must have shown. But if getting back at Malfoy like that didn't work, what could she do? Her current difficulties were playing havoc on her study time, while her friends were hurt too. And even if she did shut up Malfoy, could a muggleborn continue as a member of Slytherin house? The whole situation had her snapping at everyone and in their latest Herbology lesson the warming charm they'd been learning to protect the plants in the cold days of the approaching winter got out of hand. It somehow managed to start a fire that almost gleefully devoured every plant within reach, and forced professor Sprout to use a powerful Freezing charm to stop it when conjured water had no effect. The plump professor had given her detention; the herbologist's dismay at the lost plants was a lot worse than the hours Valeria had to work to fix the damage.

Slowly but certainly, a plan begun to form in the back of her mind as she endured humiliation after humiliation. And if it worked, Malfoy would not trouble her ever again...

 **...**

"Furnunculus!"

"Locomotor Wibbly!"

Valeria dodged frantically to the right and almost fell flat on her face as she barely avoided the two jinxes. Athletics had never been her strongest skill.

"Titillando!"

She had neither the time nor the balance to evade her first assaillant's follow-through attack and suddenly felt dozens of invisible fingers tickling her all over her body. She gasped, her wand almost falling off her fingers, as she tried to focus and mouth off an incantation. It was useless though. Her first two attempts fizzled as she couldn't stop giggling long enough to cast and her third was sent wide by her trembling hands. Then one of her opponents -she didn't see which- hit her with another tickling charm and she collapsed in helpless laughter, limbs twitching uselessly as she lay on the cold stone floor. The second assailant walked up to her and just stared for nearly a minute before a barrage of stinging hexes came out of the wand pointed at her. By the eight hex the sharp jabs of pain, as if being stung by wasps, had overcome any urge to keep laughing, magical or otherwise.

"That was pathetic." Daphne criticized sharply. "You're never going to beat Malfoy if you don't get better, and dueling is more than knowing a few good spells to hurl at your opponents." She flicked her eyes at the blackened patch of wall behind her. "Even if some of them are scary for someone our age."

"Yeah, it's like dancing!" Tracey piped it. "The best way to twist and roll away from attacks while keeping your eyes on the other guy is really similar to it."

"Well then, I'm probably screwed." Valeria spat angrily as she was pulled to her feet. This dueling practice fiasco really hurt - and it had been her suggestion in the first place! As was insisting at two opponents. "I never was very good at dancing; books seemed so much more interesting, you know?"

"You and your books!" scoffed the aristocratic blonde, dainty nose upturned. "Dueling cannot be learned from a piece of dry parchment."

If she said so. Though given the outcome of their duel, she probably knew what she was doing. Even at age twelve, most pureblood children had elegance and poise already bred into them. Malfoy, despite his obvious faults, was much like Daphne in that regard. Valeria knew she might never be able to fight like them; hardly athletic to begin with, spending her every hour reading and learning had made her less than impressive, physically. But if there was one thing she truly enjoyed about magic it was that learning was, in many ways, doing. Entirely unlike any muggle discipline, knowledge, understanding and mental effort translated directly into results.

"Wait, let me try something." Focusing on the only protective spell she'd found that was anywhere near her level, she moved her wand in a simple jab and whispered the incantation. Her spirits immediately plummeted when nothing happened but a few moments later she remembered the effects were supposed to be invisible.

"Hey Daphne, cast something at me." The taller Slytherin girl rolled her eyes and cast another stinging jinx at her. There was a flash, a cracking sound and a feeling as if someone had just punched her in the gut. Stumbling backwards, she almost fell back down, but a moment later she was smiling.

"Way to go Campbell, getting knocked off your feet by the simplest jinx in the world." Tracey snarked.

"No, no, no." Valeria countered. "It almost worked. I mean, the jinx didn't actually hit me. I think the shield just broke."

"Shield?" the brunette asked curiously.

"Protego, the shielding charm. It makes an invisible barrier that deflects up to moderate jinxes, sending them back at the caster. I think I did it!"

"If by 'did it' you mean you almost got knocked down as it barely blocked the lamest offensive spell, ever..." Daphne commented drily. "Don't bother with it in a duel. Better to retaliate even if you can't dodge than trying to pull off third-year magic to no effect."

Daphne didn't get it. All she'd read about magical theory agreed on a few points about magic. One of them was that age did not limit what you could do much; there had been documented cases of preschoolers who managed accidental apparition or survived violent accidents or disasters with nary a scratch. It was only a matter of wanting it badly enough, and then building the skill to consciously do it. Certainly her own bouts of underage magic had been like that - and she wore gloves to hide the evidence to this day. Not that this was something she'd shared with anyone other than her brother Claude...

"We have an hour and a half to practice till curfew!" She said excitedly. "We can even try dodging and shielding at the same time. If the first fails, the second might still work!"

"Don't get your hopes up yet." the ever-dour pureblood said but raised her own wand anyway. "I bet you'll fail even if we try a hundred times."

"Are you kidding?" Valeria countered, her previous fury replaced by determination. The best way to get her to try something had always been to tell her it was impossible. She didn't expect to learn a third-year spell easily but if it could be done she vowed to do so. "Even with casting slowly every ten seconds, we still have time for over five hundred attempts today alone."

 **...**

As November gave way to December and the entire castle was preparing for Christmas - or rather Yule - Valeria's resentment towards other Slytherins at her unfair treatment lessened considerably. For one thing, they'd finally made her notice some of her own deficiencies and faults without meaning to. Having to run from assailants or dodge attacks every so often was actually improving her physical condition - something she'd never had done on her own even after she'd noticed the problem. She was too lazy to exercise on her own and not above admitting it. And she wasn't good with people, especially enemies. Tracey had noted how she always tended to escalate a situation, think the worst of others, react violently as soon as she could. After some thought, she had to agree with her; she needed to learn patience and tolerance too. Setting someone up sometimes worked better than violence.

For another, she'd come to Hogwarts as she'd done with any other school; to learn. She'd never thought before that she needed any other reason, another motivation. Malfoy's attacks and Daphne's less than gentle help had been a wake-up call. Motives were a good thing; they had you doing the hard work you wouldn't otherwise do, they gave you goals to focus on. "Learning magic" had been her goal but it was turning out to be too broad and generic. She was glad to have an obvious, immediate goal for the year, at last. And if she achieved it, Malfoy certainly wouldn't be.

Last but certainly not least, her magic was improving faster now that she was pushing herself. Almost every day she was returning to bed too exhausted to cast another spell but already she'd foiled an ambush twice by holding a Shield Charm up between classes. She'd also been improving her cleaning charm by scourgifying her sheets, clothes, toiletries and backpack every single time before using them, ensuring they had not been coated with potions, poisons, prank materials or substances or simply made gross and dirty when she wasn't looking.

On the social front, one of Tracey's ideas proved pure gold - literally. Ostensibly incesed at being labeled pariahs and blood-traitors for associating with her, Tracey and Daphne would attack her at all hours, take prank requests and apparently make her life hell. In reality, what they were actually doing was more training hidden in plain sight, getting control of the situation since people who'd unexpectedly attack her wouldn't bother if she were already "dealt with", burning off the social stigma of their association, AND getting their hands on much of the gold Malfoy and his cronies bribed her attackers with. And if anyone from Slytherin ever stumbled on one of their secret tutoring sessions, they could simply claim they'd taken advantage of the nice empty classroom to ambush her and "teach her a lesson" - which was pretty much the truth, from a certain point of view.

Still, as much as the situation had turned from insufferable to merely ugly, she had not forgotten what had started the whole thing. Sooner or later, the deception would have either served her purpose or someone would have seen through it. And then it would be time for her second favorite thing in the world, after learning.

Violence.

 **...**


	10. Ice and Fire

**With this chapter we're halfway through book one. Some fluff, backstory and friendship to balance the action in previous chapters and those still to come. Still has magic in it though. In canon, enchantment is never shown in the foreground despite being so prevalent in the wizarding world because Harry has little talent with it; he's never shown using even its simplest forms at least. Hermione on the other hand enchants a banner for Gryffindor as early as mid-November for Harry's first Quidditch match. Valeria is similarly talented but I had to delay her forays into it as dueling is taking too much of her time. On the other hand, she stayed at Hogwarts where magic is allowed so...**

 **Disclaimer: J. Rowling owns Harry Potter and his world. I'm merely trying my hand at redecorating the plot a bit for free.**

 **...**

Valeria stumbled into the library, left leg aching from hip to heel. Sometimes the mark of progress could be literal and her friends were getting better at curses from all the practice they'd been having. A split-second failure in her shield charm and a direct hit from an overpowered stinging hex had sent her to the hospital wing to face madam Pomfrey's disapproving scowl once again. She considered ending the daily training sessions with Daphne and Tracey while she was tried to find the most padded chair in the library. She winced but not due to the librarian's piercing stare; even the softening charm she'd just used on it would not allow her to sit comfortably. In the end, she decided against stopping. If new bruises, scrapes and hospital wing visits didn't keep coming up regularly, some of the real bullies in her House would arrange something far more unpleasant sooner rather than later. The gymnastics lessons she'd had when she was eight hadn't been much easier; without magic a sprained ankle or wrist would hurt for days. And while she'd eventually dropped that gym class, not getting better at dueling wasn't an option.

The tome she'd requested was finally available so she opened it at the first chapter, took out a blank piece of parchment, and got to work. Fifteen minutes later, the parchment could shift between colors on simple preset triggers but shaping the effect into specific shapes and letters was proving tricky. Professor Flitwick had spent a whole lesson on the theory of how to apply the color-changing charm on objects correctly. The key wasn't to simply change an object's color, which produced a single, one-time effect, but to infuse the object with the charm itself so it could later use the magic you placed upon it to shift color when and how you wanted to. Valeria found the process fascinating and wished she'd had time to explore it earlier in the term. Most of the rest of the students didn't agree; Charms were supposed to be the easy, soft option. Why should they attempt something as hard as their transfigurations, especially if it wasn't in the practical curriculum until late second year? The young Slytherin witch shook her head at such idiocy. Professor Flitwick may not have mentioned it but the tome she was reading did; this was the simplest form of enchantment, the art of infusing objects with magic directly. From what she'd seen of the wizarding world so far, enchantment was as much a staple of the magical world as any other field of magic, even more so that potions or transfiguration. From broomsticks, to magical letters, to animated toys and house appliances, to lasting defenses on homes and public buildings, enchantments were everywhere. Hell, Merlin himself was the most famous wizard ever for being the Prince of Enchanters! If that wasn't a hint modern views on the subject were dead wrong then what was? So she focused on her work despite the occasional sting of pain every time she shifted, determined to get it right before curfew.

 **...**

With Christmas break fast approaching, not many students frequented the library. Those who did were usually Ravenclaws, often in their fifth and seventh year and preparing for their most important exams. So when Harry Potter and Ron Weasley scrambled inside, claimed a whole reading table for themselves and started offloading books on it by the dozen, Valeria was really surprised. The two of them had never struck her as especially studious. Weasley certainly wasn't. When Neville walked in and went to join them a few minutes later, her attention was drawn like a moth to the flame. The timid Gryffindor had been improving by leaps and bounds in their private sessions and not just in potions either. But nearly two weeks ago Neville had approached her after class to mumble about homework and limited free time and they had not had another session since. Valeria had found it strange then, but said nothing as she had her own problems to deal with. Now however... was his meeting Potter and Weasley why Neville had no time for anything else? What were they doing that could be more important than Neville's continued success in class?

If pressed, Valeria would admit to being a bit annoyed her friend was hanging out with Weasley of all people and keeping it a secret from her. So while she kept working on the color-shifting parchment, she threw a look towards the three boys every so often. By the time the parchment sported a Slytherin emblem that shifted between green and silver in the cadence of the bearer's words or song (not that most Slytherins would be caught dead singing), dinner was already behind them and none of the boys had moved - not even Weasley whose stomach could be heard rumbling two aisles over. They'd even skimmed all the books they'd brought to their table but from the lack of notes or practical application Valeria was beginning to think they were searching for something specific but had not found it yet.

Curfew approached and the library was closing to student access. Her parchment was now full of words in dancing colors, a copy of the formula for the basic color-shifting enchantment, enchanted to display exactly what the theory described. She'd spent some time infusing the parchment with magic and fatigue from her early dueling practice coupled with the extra drain of her latter work was catching up with her. A simple color-changing charm cast with a word and a gesture within a few seconds might last for a few hours. Blank parchment was especially receptive to writing or coloring magic so that extended to a day or two. To make the magic last as long as her current skill allowed she'd had to 'charge' it for hours instead of seconds. She'd show it to professor Flitwick for some extra credit but the primary reason for all that work was to see if she could. That, and bragging rights; she doubted other first-years could have repeated it. By the time she was done, Potter, Weasley and Neville were leaving as well. A smirk appeared on her face; laziness was the enemy of successful subterfuge and even many people good in stealth forgot that. The three boys certainly did as they left the books they'd been reading unsorted on their reading desk. With the ready-made pretext of returning them to their shelves, Valeria checked what topics the boys had read. That didn't satisfy her curiosity though.

Why were the three of them researching magical artifacts?

 **...**

"Let's duel all day long, you said." Daphne complained. "We have no lessons and the castle to ourselves, you said." The tall blonde collapsed in her customary seat in the Great Hall as they waited for food to arrive. "This is the last time I listen to your crackpot ideas before breakfast, Campbell!"

Valeria groaned too and Tracey joined her. "How could I know that many spells would leave us exhausted? It's not as if our training sessions had lasted more than an hour or so before today! On the plus side, we can study theory still. No spells required for that." Tracey kicked her and didn't bother to hide it.

"It's a holiday!" She exclaimed. "You know, designated fun time? If you still want to practice you can do color-changing charms on our hair and nails. Daphne and I won't mind."

"Don't volunteer me for a test subject, Tracey." Daphne warned. "Remember how the first year girls' bathroom had a locked door for hours yesterday and odd sounds were coming from within? When Valeria came out she had pink hair and purple eyebrows for the rest of the day. I rather fancy my normal platinum-blonde mane, thank you very much." She turned towards the other blonde then. "Though I would like to know what locking charm you used. Rachel Morton failed to unlock the door and she's a third year."

"Trade secret. People can't counter if they don't know the spell used and I'd like to keep it that way." Valeria replied, smirking. She was certain a professor wouldn't be baffled for long but most students? Unlocking a door, even with magic, was quite hard if it weren't locked in the first place.

"You're mean!" Tracey said playfully as she soaked an extra-large helping of chocolate chip cookies with fat-free milk. Valeria and Daphne exchanged confused looks over their sandwiches. What was the purpose of fat-free milk if it accompanied that much sugar, butter and flour? The tall lean pureblood, whose sandwich had chicken breast instead of Valeria's preferred bacon and cheddar, looked a bit disgusted with their friend's sweet tooth.

"How about a walk in the castle grounds?" Daphne suggested after some thought. "Homework, practice, the lessons themselves, secret dueling; we've been inside for so long I've forgotten what the countryside looks like. Back home I liked going for walks in the meadows, enjoying the mountain air."

"I..." Valeria hesitated and looked from Tracey's eager face to Daphne's wistful one. "Sorry girls, I can't... maybe come Christmas?" she finished quickly as she got a brief glimpse of hurt followed by an expressionless mask in the proud pureblood girl's face.

"If you can't you can't." Daphne shrugged, apparently unconcerned. "Would have been nice though."

Good mood evaporating, the three girls finished their breakfast in silence, the near-empty Great Hall offering no commentary on their discussion.

 **...**

Christmas morning found Valeria content and asleep. She'd worked till very late the previous night and was deep in dreamland at that moment. That latter condition did not last long against the squealing invaders.

"Wake up sleepyhead, the presents are here!" came a high-pitched voice unrecognizable in its mirth and excitement.

"I suggest you do as she says, Campbell." Daphne commented drily. "Unless you know the silencing and annoyance-repelling charms."

"Shut it, princess! It's Christmas; no misanthropic commentary allowed!"

"See what I mean?" Daphne lamented as Valeria's bed's curtains were unceremoniously swept aside and the comforting darkness of the dungeons was broken by a strong light spell. Valeria mumbled something in return the other two didn't quite catch and pulled her blanket over her head. A few moments later, she burst out of the sheets, squealing and laughing. It took her five minutes to calm down and catch her breath but by then she was well and truly awake.

"What the bloody hell was that?" she asked between deep gulps of air.

"Tickling jinx." stated Daphne evenly. "If I didn't get to sleep in due to her undignified sqeals..."

"Hey!"

"...then neither will you." Daphne continued as if Tracey had not spoken. "Now up, up! Before I curse your hair off."

"Slavedriver." grumbled Valeria and made for the bathroom.

Half an hour later, the three girls were lounging before the great fireplace in the Slytherin common room, a pile of presents next to each of them. A fourth pile of torn wrapping paper was forming between Valeria and Tracey without Daphne's contribution; the tallest of the trio carefully unwrapped her every present, leaving the wrappings neatly folded and intact, ready to be used for something else.

"You're out of luck, Campbell." Daphne stated as she unwrapped another present to reveal a heavy tome with thick bindings.

"Why?" Valeria said as she pocketed her father's present - a sizable gift certificate arranged through Gringotts. "It's you who got the purple book with the bronze decorations. Totally clashes with your colors, you know." she joked, trying to get Daphne to smile. The girl was too serious for her own good.

"True, it's garish. But don't judge a book by it's cover." Daphne smirked and her eyes gleamed. "Mum sent me _Curses and Counter-Curses_ by Vindictus Viridian. Can't wait to try it in our next training session."

"She got you there, Val." Tracey said as she unwrapped another one of her family's gifts. "Oh Merlin, its _Wizarding Manners and Traditions_ again. My cousins have been sending me copies since forever."

"Why would they send you the same book more than once?" Valeria asked, curious. She set Claude's gift aside without opening it. She knew what it would be and even among friends, it wouldn't do for any Slytherin to catch her reading muggle comics; she'd never hear the end of it. She'd enjoy it later in the safety of her bed.

"I'm a halfblood and they aren't." Tracey almost growled. "That automatically makes me incapable of learning anything without ridiculous repetition, in their eyes. Of course, mum disagrees. She sent me to Hogwarts at the first opportunity, tuition fully paid. Their parents homeschooled them. 'To better learn family tradition', they said. Of course, they didn't mention they're from a minor branch of the family and lacked the money."

"Don't waste words talking to or about bigots, Trace. It only messes up your mood." Valeria advised. "Just punch in their nose instead of good morning. Or curse them to the hospital. Both are equally satisfying." She set aside her mother's gift too. It was a piece of magical parchment, one of a pair linked with an amanuensis charm. Whatever one wrote in one appeared in the other; two people could thus send instant messages between them. If there was no more room, one could simply scourgify or otherwise clear the letters. Mother wasn't a witch but she did have access to muggle pencils and erasers. Apparently, she'd also arranged for a visit to Diagon Alley to get her magical gifts and have everything sent by owl.

"Wait, what's this?" Daphne said as she held up a silver pin with a tiny glass bead at the end.

"Got one too." Tracey came up with an identical pin. "What's up with them Val? The notes say they're from you."

"Yep." Valeria confirmed. "Just think of a color while touching them."

The other two girls did so and nothing seemed to happen; the pins remained the same. It was Daphne who noticed first her nails had turned the same platinum-blonde as her hair while Tracey's were Slytherin green.

"They are... nail-coloring pins?" she frowned. "I've never heard of something like that. Not that it's impossible; color-shifting nail polish does the same thing. It's just... odd to enchant a pin so."

"They came from an odd enchanter." Valeria's smile widened as her friends tried a few more colors.

"Wait... you made them?!" Tracey stared. "Is that the work you had to do, back when the holidays started?"

"Wasn't that hard. Do you like them?" No, it had been definitely harder than that. Over a week of late nights, trial and error with her as a guinea pig to get it right and more work to make the enchantment last. She couldn't wait to start arithmancy in third year. Being able to predict how something would work via numbers-based magic would hugely cut down on development times.

"They're great, thank you." Daphne said graciously. Only a tiny flicker of excitement showed through her elegant manners. "I hope our gifts measure up."

They certainly did. The two of them had pooled resources and coordinated their orders to some high class tannery in Wales. The results of their efforts were a pair of gloves and a pair of boots, both in dark green leather. The gloves were as thick and heavy as those they used in the potions lab but exquisitely tailored and amazingly flexible. Once worn, they'd cover her arms to the elbow but leave her fingers as unimpeded as the opera gloves she always had on. The boots were of a similar make, fitting firmly up to her knees but still letting her legs breathe somehow.

"They're dragonhide." Tracey pointed out as Valeria considered the gloves. "I saw you always wore a pair and thought..." her voice trailed off a bit uncertainly as Valeria didn't move. "Useful, too. Most magic slides off dragonhide like water and these cover your hands. Disarming charms, finger-removing jinxes; whoever tries them on you will get a surprise."

"Malfoy and his ilk came to mind when we were considering what to get you." Daphne agreed. "The boots are good for many jinxes of our level, too. Leg-lockers, stickfast hexes, trippers. Some may see it as escalation but it'll be a good thing. They'll have to take you seriously even if you're an 'ickle firstie' in their eyes. And if they go for more serious magic and get caught? More trouble for them."

Valeria sighed. They'd put a lot of thinking -and galleons- into it. And both gloves and boots would look awesome, she could tell. But... No, there was no 'but'.

"Can you two keep a secret?" she asked in a near-whisper. Tracey nodded but Daphne's perfect eyebrows rose in challenge.

"We're Slytherin." she simply stated.

Valeria slowly and deliberately took off her old gloves, watching their expressions carefully.

"When the hell did that happen!?" Daphne's voice was sharp and angry and her demand would not be denied.

"When... when I was seven." Valeria gulped in remembered agony. "We were on a camping trip with my family and I was cold. I'd never been anywhere without good heating for long, see. I wished for a fire... and it appeared."

"That's when you got burned?" Tracey asked but Valeria shook her head.

"No, no, it was nice and warm. I liked it. So the very next evening I wished for it again." The other two were listening carefully as she continued. "I made fire a few more times. My brother Claude - he's a muggle - he saw. He was only a few years older than me, always reading fantasy books and comics. He was impressed; urged me to try again. We played with the flames every time our parents weren't watching, going off on our own. We were young... and stupid." Valeria's face paled a bit but the new determination she'd found when working the harder spells pushed her on. "We were playing when I slipped. Broke my ankle, grazed my shoulder on a rock. I'd never been hurt badly before; I cried. And the fire I'd been making grew. It was as if my hands were hoses throwing lit gasoline instead of water. The heat burned my hands. And the more it hurt the more fire I threw."

Silence met her words. Two hands rested on her shoulders, offering comfort, but nobody spoke.

"Claude grabbed me from behind and carried me to a nearby river at a dead run. The burns were nearly to my elbows by the time he threw me into the water. The camping site was destroyed that night. Forest fire, they said." Valeria sighed again. "We never said anything to our parents; they assumed we'd been caught unawares by the fire. Took a couple of months for my hands to stop hurting. I never went to another camping trip, focusing entirely on my books instead. Didn't try any more fire magic till I got a wand. Claude saw some space movie a few months later and had me trying to move objects without touching them. It didn't come as easily but it helped me get over the fire."

"Val, I'm sorry." Tracey said. "We..."

"You're an idiot." Daphne interrupted, no longer angry.

"I was seven! And knew nothing about magic, remember?" How could her friend say something like that...

"Not back then; now." Daphne sat up. "We're going to madam Pomfrey immediately. And then we'll talk about this."

"But..." Valeria tried to interrupt but the other witch didn't listen.

"How can you be so brilliant and yet miss the simplest things I'll never understand." Daphne said as she dragged her through the portrait. "Have you never wondered why most witches and wizards don't have any scars or blemishes?"

"Daphne what do you...?"

"Madam Pomfrey can mend bones in an instant, you idiot. She can outright regrow them overnight! Unless a wound is cursed or made by powerful magic, healing spells and potions will restore it completely. You should have asked her to remove these scars months ago!"

"I... I never even considered it!"

"Obviously." Daphne snarked. "We're getting you fixed now and then we're getting out. No reading, no training. Tracey is right; you don't do nearly enough things for fun."

 **...**

Valeria ran through the Hogwarts grounds that evening with an old weight removed from her shoulders. She and Daphne and Tracey made snow angels and snowmen, rolled through the snows and had a great time. They laughed along with the Weasley twins after the two older Gryffindors had charmed several snowballs to bounce off professor Quirrel's face and ran for a bit when they tried to do the same to them. Potter, Neville and the younger Weasley appeared then and joined in the impromptu snowfight. Surrounded, the three Slytherin girls had to stand and fight against overwhelming Gryffindor forces but the battle didn't end up as their sworn foes expected. Valeria had become handy enough with a Shielding Charm to deflect lesser curses; a few snowballs, even the charmed ones the Weasley twins threw, weren't much of a challenge. Ron retaliated by levitating a truly impressive amount of snow and dropping it on them but the three girls dodged faster than the slow-moving mass could hit, even if Valeria had to roll awkwardly. After that both sides threw snow around with magic, though neither his twin brothers nor Valeria could match Ron Weasley's feat with a simple hovering charm. In the end, both sides were thoroughly soaked and muddy but Slytherin had the last laugh; Valeria conjured some Cold-Fire for warmth while Tracey did one of her mother's household cleaning charms and got rid of all the mud. The boys had to retreat back to the castle to avoid freezing but everyone was laughing and had loads of fun.

Valeria didn't know why Tracey and Daphne had been worried; their Christmas gift was truly awesome...


	11. Cloak and Dagger

**And here the plot threads begin pulling our protagonist towards the end of the year. A lot of things to set up still for this term, especially since the Stone will only be getting a single chapter after this. Plus, some stuff for books six and seven. And as always, more use of and information on magic. There is a lot of the wizarding world not in the original novels because of their focus on the plot and IMHO that is a shame. I for one would like to have read about rocket charms or bludgers and other flying objects and their enchantments for example.**

 **Disclaimer:**

 **Harry Potter belongs to J. Rowling. People who claim otherwise are likely to be beaten to death by a swarm of rogue bludgers. Or lawyers; pick your poison.**

 **...**

After the holidays, the castle slowly returned to its normal routine. Lessons resumed. Students of all years scrambled to finish homework they'd forgotten to do over the break. The professors piled even more homework upon them in a misguided attempt to teach them patience and love for hard work. The students responded with frequent bouts of forgetfulness, forays into creative prevarication, sudden illnesses that sent them to the hospital wing, and blowing up the ground floor bathrooms; the usual for any major educational institution.

"And I thought I was a pessimist." Daphne said as the three of them discussed things. "Less than one student in fifty does all that, you know."

"That still means class is interrupted every other time." Valeria grumbled as they climbed from the dungeons to the Great Hall after the day's potions lesson.

"Don't mind her." Tracey bumped Valeria's elbow and smirked. "She's still angry about the bathrooms."

"Of course I'm bloody angry about the bloody bathrooms!" Valeria's pale face turned a cute shade of red. "I'm not using those in our dungeons after Bulstrode and Parkinson tried to corner me there, the second-floor ones have been out of order since forever and some kind of monster guards the west wing in the third floor. With those on the first floor gone, I'll either have to climb all the way up our way too large school or bathe in the lake."

"Some of the boys might like that." Tracey snarked. "Think that's why the Weasley twins did it?"

The other two girls shot her questioning looks as the trio dodged a throng of disgruntled Gryffindors scrambling to escape the dungeons after their latest encounter with Professor Snape.

"Oh come on!" the brunette complained. "I verified the rumor three times already. The whole school must know - how come you two don't?"

"I always preferred a good book to the Hogwarts rumor mill. Although..." Valeria looked at her friend speculatively. "Could you start a rumor? Have the rumor mill whispering about something specific?"

"It... depends." Tracey's response didn't give the other two much confidence. "I suppose you want to avoid anything being tracked back to us, right?"

Valeria and Daphne nodded emphatically. "It's not going to work if it comes from us." the shorter blonde said while the tallest of the trio looked at her incredulously. "Not going to work? Try total disaster!"

"Hmm. I suppose I could spread it by way of Lavender Brown... what?" The brunette raised her eyebrows in challenge at her two friends' surprise. "Contacts in other houses are invaluable for this kind of work. Especially if, in all their Gryffindorness, they act first and think later. Now spill! What, or rather who, did you two want me to badmouth?"

"Draco Malfoy and his academic prowess." Valeria smirked as she said so, though her voice was not far from a growl.

"Or his lack thereof." Daphne added in her normal disinterested tone. "And how that relates to his parentage."

 **...**

Over the following days, the three girls fell back to their usual activities. Pretending to be at each other's throats most of the time was becoming fun, after all their practice. Valeria couldn't believe they'd gotten away with it for so long; their plot was not so elaborate. Daphne insisted it was a matter of realism. Almost everyone enjoyed a good cat fight, she explained, especially if real wounds were on the table. The scions of pureblood families loved seeing the mudblood being 'put in her place' too, but often saw dealing with her themselves as beneath them. And since blood sport was not exciting if the victim didn't struggle a bit, Valeria occasionally fighting back made it even better as long as she still ended up passing the night in the hospital wing. For some families, it had not been so long since they had last joined a muggle or mudblood hunt after all.

Their lessons were becoming more interesting as well. In transfiguration, professor McGonagal taught them the basics of animate to inanimate transfigurations and provided for them mice which they had to turn into snuffboxes. It was the hardest transfiguration in the first-year curriculum but the joint Slytherin-Ravenclaw class was rather advanced for its age. Padma Patil at least must have been practicing during the holidays as she nearly matched Valeria in the practical portion and narrowly outdid her in the theoretical questions. Initially surprised, the Slytherin witch realized that with all her extracurricular activities the time she spent on her studies had diminished.

In Herbology professor Sprout taught them _Incendio_ , the fire-making charm. Most of the class could barely produce a strong enough flame to light a campfire or scare off their Spiky Bush in their first few attempts. The thin, white-hot jet from Valeria's wand on the other hand turned her own bush into ash. Professor Sprout didn't take any points off Slytherin, despite her dismay. She did send her to professor Flitwick with a note explaining the situation though, and Valeria had to spend an hour every day practicing her control of magic with him until she "didn't cause disasters with the simplest of spells" as the note said.

In Charms, they studied the theory behind variations of the Levitation Charm. The Hover, Locomotor and Rocket charms were the most interesting, especially the last of the three and its use in making Bludgers for Quidditch since ancient times. They also discussed a common flaw in the Levitation charm, shared by most of its variations and the more complex flying charms as well. They were easily used on objects, with even a first-year student being able to lift several times their weight for a short time if they were determined enough and adult wizards being able to permanently enchant even large vehicles to fly, but far less effective on the living. Animals could be lifted with difficulty but humans could not; when someone was levitated, the magic was applied to their clothes, not their body. Unsupported flight was considered by many an impossibility.

History was quickly becoming everyone's least favorite subject; in the sixteen weeks of lessons they've already had the so-called professor Binns had already repeated the entirety of their textbook twice in that droning monologue of his and was starting on a third. Valeria, Daphne and Tracey had stopped taking notes long ago and were practicing the least visible spells in their repertoire under their shared desk. Other students treated the class as a free period, some of them even sleeping, while a few failed to show up at all. It wasn't as if Binns knew their names well enough to give them detention after all - which made Valeria curious about how they were even graded.

Astronomy, despite sharing the same lack of magic use as History, was far more interesting. Their enchanted telescopes made observation of the solar system far easier than any muggle equivalent and when asked about it, professor Sinistra mentioned wizard astronomers had already made highly detailed maps of the galaxy - something their muggle counterparts were many decades from achieving. On the other hand, wizarding astronomy focused on the magical significance of stellar bodies, not the scientific one. That, along with focusing entirely on the visible spectrum put them far behind on how stars and the universe actually worked... not that most wizards cared about it.

In potions, they'd moved to the more complex and much more interesting Forgetfulness Potion. If brewed correctly - which wasn't that difficult in Valeria's opinion - it could incite memory loss depending on the dosage. In theory, it was less useful than the far more flexible memory charms that could selectively modify memories and, with enough skill, even replace them with total fabrications. In practice the basic memory charm was taught in sixth year, which meant a good percentage of the wizarding population simply never learned it as they never took Advanced Charms. And of those they did not everyone could master the spell, making capable Obliviators highly paid ministry employees. The potion on the other hand could be brewed successfully by anyone... so why was everyone not excited with its potential uses? Daphne she could understand; the girl showed only an average talent for brewing Valeria suspected came from most purebloods' aversion to cooking for themselves. If one didn't even know how to make toast without a house elf of course they'd have trouble with professor Snape's exacting art. But even Malfoy and Parvati, the other two brewers around Valeria's level of ability, seemed uninterested. The blonde Slytherin shrugged, finished and bottled a sample of her own concoction and took it to the Potions Master for grading. She lamented all that remained in her cauldron for it would soon be vanished; if there was one thing about her Head of House that annoyed her it would be his outright refusal to let them actually use what they brewed. Well, that would be prudent given the toxicity of what the average student managed to brew but Valeria's potions were always good. Oh well... it wasn't as if she wouldn't make them again during her and Neville's tutoring sessions and keep the results for her own private use. Neville considered her a great friend for helping him without asking for anything in return and Valeria saw no reason to correct that assumption just then. She saw the Gryffindor boy as a work in progress; eventually he'd become a better person after his naive trust and timidity wore away, but to rush things would be to hurt him and destroy all the progress he'd already made.

 **...**

If there was one thing Valeria had failed to do over the holidays and now cursed herself for forgetting, it was the return of certain books she'd borrowed from the library's restricted section. Now that everyone else was back from the holidays, the castle had its full array of prefects patrolling in the early hours of the night and far too many people running around before curfew. The librarian was far more attentive and the caretaker and his cat too active to avoid. Daphne and Tracey were no help whatsoever. The former was too busy repeating her "I told you so"s each time the subject came up and the latter was firmly against even the slightest Gryffindor tendency to invite danger one could avoid. After several days of nagging Valeria decided to resolve the situation on her own, proving that particular weapon in a girl's arsenal worked on friends just as well as it did on siblings or parents.

As with all her late night walks, preparation was key. Disguising herself as a Gryffindor and hiding her features as much as possible was becoming standard procedure already. Daphne and Tracey had not managed to pull off the Featherweight charm yet but Valeria was becoming better at it. She had not managed to actually turn herself or anything else of similar size the weight of a feather yet, but having a fifth her normal weight or less was still tremendously useful. For even greater chance of success, she arranged for Filtch to be indisposed through the use of the Stickfast Jinx. Correctly cast upon a person, it stuck their shoes to the ground by conjuring a thin film of foul, icky adhesive on their soles. Cast on random objects on the other hand simply made a walnut-sized blob of the goo at the point of impact that quickly dried and lost any adhesive properties. One needed to use the actual Sticking Charm to make useful adhesive, something that still took over a minute of effort for the young witch to do. It was a good thing then that she didn't need useful adhesive; she simply sneaked by Filtch's office half an hour before curfew when he was making one of his rounds and cast the Stickfast Jinx randomly for five minutes. Two hundred blobs of goo on his desk, chairs, drawers, filing cabinets and walls ought to keep the disagreeable caretaker's nose out of her business for the whole night.

Woken by Daphne at one in the morning - the one concession to helping the pureblood girl had made - Valeria snuck out of the first year dormitory, then the common room, then moved out of the dungeons as quickly as the need for silence allowed. She cast and held a Shield Charm too - a split second advantage in any hairy situation would be good. Any Slytherin prefect other than Gemma would have been an unpleasant late night encounter, to say nothing of the Bloody Baron or their Head of House. Despite her worries though, she managed to reach the library without incident. Ms Pince was thankfully absent and so the way was clear. Except that someone already was at the restricted section ahead of her!

Said someone was doing a far better job of sneaking than her. They had somehow managed to remain almost entirely unseen; if not for the patch of wandlight that escaped whatever made them invisible she would have missed them entirely. She might have even bumped onto them in the darkness. Carefully hiding behind a bookcase nearby, Valeria observed the unknown rulebreaker's search of the restricted section. It became quickly apparent they hardly knew what they were doing, searching book after book with no obvious pattern. Daphne and Tracey's experience with magical libraries had helped considerably in Valeria's own forays into this section while the stranger before her lacked such experience. Valeria's heart thundered in her ribcage when they reached for one of the heavy tomes Daphne had warned her against. Upon being touched the magical book screamed, a phantom face trying to escape from its pages. The unknown invisible person stumbled away and whatever hid them fell away for a moment, leaving them in plain sight. Valeria could not believe it; it was Harry Potter! Faulting him for delving into the restricted section would have been hypocritical but what, exactly, was he looking for? She had not forgotten the research on magical artifacts he, Neville and Weasley had been working on before the holidays - was whatever they were searching for Dark magic? And how did Potter make himself invisible? Valeria's desire to have that ability too made her mouth dry. Maybe if...

Heavy steps from behind her announced the arrival of a third person, an individual moving too fast and heavily to be a younger student. Both she and Potter scrambled away, Valeria unloading the books in her pouch in the restricted section in passing. Potter had already dropped some books in his hasty retreat; a few more would make no difference. Going left when Potter turned right in an intersection, she managed to lose her pursuer due to her enhanced speed. Running blindly all the way to the Slytherin dormitories, she collapsed on her bed out of breath, lungs and legs burning...

 **...**

"You won't believe what happened last night!" were her first words upon being woken by her friends the following day. She'd slept late and they were barely in time for breakfast. "I was in the restricted section when..."

"Hey there Campbell." interrupted Gemma as she walked up to them. The fifth-year prefect was frowning deeply, her watchful eyes searching their faces for something. "Professor Snape wants you in his office."

"Wh- what does he want?" Valeria's heart sped up once more, her face flushing with both trepidation and chargin.

"He didn't say." Gemma mused. "But I have my suspicions." She did?! Oh no! "You better get going. Our Head of House is not known for his patience."

"Nice knowing you, Val!" came Tracey's farewell as she jumped off the table and ran, not relieving her in the slightest...

 **...**


	12. Inauspicious Encounters

**Sometimes, the fact that the ministry approves a spell or potion doesn't mean much. Hell, make that most times. There are some things in canon that first-years learn and use that can be pretty horrible if someone thinks about it. Harry seems to recognize that later on as he uses some of them in serious fights with Death Eaters. Or maybe that's his (dumb) refusal to use harmful magic in most situations? Except against Bellatrix. Then again, that girl kills more wizards in battle and kicks more ss than her boss in the novels. BTW, unreliable narrators are unreliable.**

 **Disclaimer: J. Rowling is responsible for all the awesome stuff in this story, other than Valeria. All the non-awesome stuff, too.**

 **...**

The Potion Master's office was a gloomy, dimly lit room, the air heavy with humidity and full of the acrid smells of corrossive substances. Dozens of glass jars of all shapes and sizes lined the shelves along three walls, filled with prepared and preserved rare ingredients, most often organs and limbs of magical animals or plants. Valeria could even see what looked like a humanoid fetus but upon careful examination and some knowledge in herbology was revealed to be a pickled mandrake root. That plant's extract could be a powerful restorative if fresh, but was also toxic if not handled carefully. Perhaps professor Snape was experimenting with the plant's toxicity?

"You are very nearly late, miss Campbell." the man himself stated from behind a small mahogany desk loaded with only a few stacks of unrecognizable notes and little in the way of teaching material or student's essays. Tall, thin, black haired and black eyed, with a long, crooked nose and never seen smiling or without his black robes, her Head of House projected the very image of a classic Dark wizard. Supporting of Slytherins in general and purebloods in particular, he was said to be strongly biased against all other houses - especially Gryffindor - and did not suffer fools gladly... or at all. Valeria saw all the above as largely irrelevant though. A muggleborn witch like her would never have survived in a Dark wizard's domain if said wizard was against her; what little she'd read on the Dark Arts convinced her of that. The Full Body Bind for example provided aware, silent victims with no ability to even struggle or damage themselves to avoid their fate. Memory of events could be washed away by the Forgetfulness potion while lasting mental damage lingered or was even caused by overdose. No matter how the fools in the ministry classified those two bits of magic, they were certainly dark; that was what drew her attention to them in the first place. That she'd not been removed from Hogwarts for a permanent stay in St. Mungo's within her first week through their use was proof enough of her Head of House's views towards her situation... she hoped. So the question now was; did professor Snape tolerate muggleborns or was his reputation as a Dark wizard false?

"Doesn't that mean I wasn't actually late, sir?" she asked diffidently, watching for his reaction. His face remained expressionless for a moment before it displayed a small frown. A perfectly neutral responce; there was no way for her to read him at all.

"Sit down miss Campbell." A flick of his wand provided her with a simple stool of black wood conjured out of thin air. "Are you aware of the reason you've been summoned?"

"I do not know, sir" she answered truthfully, if ellusively. "Reason is subjective, outside the use of some forms of magic."

Professor Snape looked at her straight in the eyes, his dark stare feeling like it pierced through her like a naturalist's needle pinning a curious bug to the examination table. Which of her past actions had brought her to his attention, she wondered. Had it been her encounters with Potter, whom he seemed to so hate? Her current interactions with Draco Malfoy perhaps, or her still-nebulous plans for his downfall? What about her past transgressions? If... She frowned. Better not to think about those. Any events that made her show guilt before her own Head of House... She frowned again. Did she have anything to feel guilty about? There were plenty of reasons... Valeria jumped up, remembered pain from countless stinging hexes and worse things jolting her out of her circular thoughts. Perspiration rolled down her face and back and her hands very nearly shook uncontrollably in the old memories of fire. She almost fell back down, legs like lead refusing to work properly. What the hell? She hadn't been sitting on the stool for that long... had she?

"I see..." professor Snape said slowly and deliberately, a responce to the last thing she'd spoken what seemed like some time ago. Well, good for him! She could make neither head nor tails of the situation and that worried her. "Perhaps then you could explain the complaints I've received from madam Pomfrey."

"Sir?"

"According to the hospital wing's matron" he elaborated "you've required her care no less than fifty-seven times. Since you've been in this school little more than five months, that makes it at least once every three days." He waited for her to speak. When she didn't, he went on. "This is a rather impressive record miss Campbell. Even people under a bad luck jinx have not managed it in the past. Our esteemed nurse further provided a list of the ailments she treated you for, presumably due to the seriousness of your situation. Or for my own amusement - I am not yet certain which. Two hundred and sixty-seven instances of severe stinging hex symptoms, eighty-nine cases of Pimple Jinx, seven cases of impaired leg function due to overexposure to the Jelly-legs Curse, five cases of total hair loss, thirty-eight broken bones, and total exhaustion every single time you've had to stay a night in her care." He delivered that list with a severe scowl that indicated not a threat but a promise.

"I. Am. Not. Amused." the Potions Master stated as if speaking to a slow child. "The school nurse providing such a list to any professor about one of their students is unprecedented. The hit to the reputation of Slytherin House it might deal if such incidents became public knowledge is unacceptable. And the reason you are here today is that I've... interviewed several individuals I'd originally believed to be the perpetrations and they have all denied participation to my satisfaction."

They did? Valeria and her friends had relied on the impossibility of proving a negative for that part of the plan. When Malfoy and co were questioned about the bullying they would, naturally, deny it but the weight of 'evidence' the trio's dueling sessions had produced would be against them. The harder they'd deny it the guiltier they'd look - not that the girls had expected it to be a problem inside Slytherin house. It would, however, garner sympathy from other Houses and even teachers as the nurse's actions had proven. Apparently though, professor Snape had some means to exonerate those they'd been trying to set up. It wouldn't ruin their efforts - the other benefits would remain - but it did pose a problem for her at that moment. She did not think she could lie to her Head of House successfully so which parts of the truth would be more beneficial to reveal? Perhaps...

"Healing magic is very interesting, sir." She said carefully. "But near-impossible to learn just from theory. It isn't taught in Hogwarts, unfortunately, and one could only see it in specialized healing classes... or a hospital."

"Interesting." Professor Snape's scowl deepened. "Is that all you have to say?"

"Well, no." she quickly backpedaled. "Hospitals, along with libraries, are... quiet and safe places. And none of the... symptoms on the nurse's list was incapacitating for those with access to healing magic."

"Enough!" Now her professor's face was turning red, his tone clipped. He wasn't buying it. "Do not ever think you can deceive me. Many great witches and wizards have tried and an eleven-year-old will not succeed where they did not."

"I..."

"Your little spat with Mr Malfoy is beginning to draw attention from outside this House and that I will not allow." He sat back down on his chair. Valeria had not even noticed him rising in the first place. She was too busy trying to make herself disappear. This being Hogwarts, that was quite impossible even with magic. "I do not see what you hope to accomplish by appearing to be even more bullied and pathetic than the average muggleborn in Slytherin would be but I suggest you resolve your harebrained schemes quickly... or suffer my displeasure." Valeria just sat on the conjured stool in the semi-darkness, trying to absorb her Head of House's reaction and ability to see right through her. They'd been so sure they'd covered themselves, that there would be no evidence. How...

It was nearly an hour later that professor Snape's curt dismissal reminded her she'd places to be, annoying prats to confront.

 **...**

Trying to corner Malfoy on his own proved to be an exercise in futility. Two weeks of cautiously following him at a distance revealed he no longer went anywhere without Crabbe and Goyle for what famous diva could do without some bodyguards? In most cases he was also joined by at least one sycophant, usually in the form of Pansy being limpeted to his side. She wanted to finish this quickly; Professor Snape's demand had already cost her a few sleepless nights. Now that she couldn't go to the hospital wing for any wound related to the secret dueling sessions they were being more careful, but all the care in the world could not eliminate the original purpose of dueling which was to hurt people until they either agreed with you or no longer annoyed you.

Should all three of them attempt it together? However delicate Daphne might appear, nobody in their right mind would bet on Crabbe and Goyle rather than her. Pansy and Tracey could both be disturbingly girly at times but after months of practice her mousey friend could probably wipe the floor with the pug-faced pureblood princess... if she wanted to. But dragging her friends into her problem in the open came with its own drawbacks. More of the same reason she had not involved adults or prefects from the beginning, truth be told; the other Slytherins wouldn't respect her if she didn't deal with it herself.

Valeria bumped off a wide chest robed in the red and gold of Gryffindor and was shaken out of her introspection at once. The chest belonged to a rather short but stout fellow with a round face, short hair the colour of carrots and an impish grin; one of the Weasley twins had just turned around a corner and into her path. The Slytherin girl backpedaled off the well-known third-year prankster and searched for a quick exit when a broom closet she'd just passed opened and disgorged an identical Gryffindor boy. Great! The Twin Terrors had her surrounded!

"Look there Fred. Is that a snake..."

"...in Gryffindor territory? Yes it is, George!"

"And just in time too..."

"...for us to talk to her."

Tracey was right; they did finish off each other's sentences. And it appeared they'd somehow managed to set up an ambush in her path. How did they even do that? Being deep in thought, even she had not known where she'd be going. Come on, she had a blonde git to corner! Why did this have to happen now? "What do you want?" she demanded sharply, fingers white from gripping her wand too tight.

"Ohh, little missy snake is being pissy..."

"...maybe she'd like a Calming Draught?"

"No George, such behaviour is standard fare..."

"...if you're a snake? Right you are Fred."

"If you don't get to the point, I'm turning you two to newts right now!" Valeria waved her wand threateningly, several thick dollops of fire dripping from the tip. "Or at least attempting to. Human transfiguration is seventh-year material and disastrous if done wrong. You two want to have frog's heads for the rest of your life?" The twins' eyebrows disappeared into their hairline in mock terror then they both burst out laughing.

"Missy snake is really cute..."

"...when she's angry, no?"

"It's about our brother..." Fred said as she was about to hex them and damn the consequences.

"...ickle Ronniekins is not happy with you." George finished. So Dimwit Rudeginger had called for familial reinforcements? Strange. She didn't think she'd done to him anything reprisal-worthy.

"...told us all about it..."

"...how you turned his rat pink..."

"...everyone is laughing about it..."

"Wait, wait, wait. This is about the rat still? It has been five bloody months!" Boys could fixate on the weirdest things. Or was it just the little Weasel?

"It's still a great laugh mate..."

"...ickle Ronniekins with the pink rat..."

"...everyone in Gryffindor has seen it by now."

"Lee Jordan made a card that sung about it the other day..."

"...simply awesome. We wanted to congratulate you..."

"...and ask you how you did it. Was it a curse?"

"Ooh Georgie, the dreaded Pinkness Curse..."

"...the fourth and worst Unforgivable!"

The two of them burst out laughing again. That was interesting. If the rat was still pink after all this time... no wonder Weasley was so hostile towards her. No boy that saw the rat or even heard of it would resist a joke or two - multiply that by however many boys lived in Gryffindor tower and Dimwit Rudeginger would have taken a good hit to his reputation. And then there were the girls. Valeria smiled nastily. They'd be oh so sympathetic, approach him with their condolences. Few boys her age could handle such attention gracefully; she doubted the least Weasley was one of them. His brothers were proof enough. If the famous tricksters thought it was awesome then there was bound to be lots of embarassment involved but little actual harm. He was their brother, after all.

"Sorry boys." She said coyly. "Trade secret. I can't go on sharing my best tricks, you know?" That, and she'd have to research it first. In retrospect, it couldn't have been just a simple color-changing charm. It had left her far too tired for that.

"Oh we understand perfectly..."

"...don't we Fred? We simply wish..."

"...to offer a few tips to an up and coming prankster."

"Tip number one: don't follow Harry Potter."

Wait, what?

"Little Ronnie's a git..."

"...but Harry's cool. Can't have him expelled..."

"...so don't corner him after midnight..."

"...in the Library's restricted section..."

Both twins patted her in the back, almost knocking her off her feet. Valeria still held the dubious distinction of being the shortest girl in Slytherin, if not the tiniest, and being reminded of it was often unpleasant. At that moment, surprise stopped her from getting back at them for it, too. How had the two of them known? She'd been disguised, her uniform changed colors, her face hidden deep in her hood, and the twins _had not been there._

This was the second time that day she was blindsided by someone's ability to uncover what she wished to remain hidden. That would not do, not for her future plans, nor for her immediate survival within her House. Determined to look up any magical means to uncover information the twins or professor Snape might have used, she went straight to the library. Once there, she ignored the curious looks from madam Pince - the librarian was always too nosy for anyone's good - and started claiming books, tomes and manuals for her research.

A couple of hours later, Daphne and Tracey came up, ready to work on their homework assignments. Valeria was glad. She'd found mention of dozens of diagnostic spells, revealing spells, detection spells and secrecy sensors but nothing that fit her circumstances. And she'd already had to discourage several giggling first and second years that were annoying her. Thank Merlin for whispered Stinging Hexes.

"Hey there Daphne, Tracey." She welcomed them eagerly. "You're a sight for sore eyes. You wouldn't believe the day I've had..."

"Well, you aren't." Daphne said primly and sat on a plain wooden chair as if it were a throne. Always with the princess act, that girl. And what did she mean? The only reply to her questioning expression were Tracey's undignified giggles, which led to a slap in the back of the head by Daphne.

"Is there a specific reason you look like you do?" asked the taller blonde, her tone trying to be placating but ending up merely distasteful.

"What do you mean?"

Instead of answering, her friend took out a hand-held mirror from her purse and handed it over. In it, her reflection's skin was a very bright, violent pink...

 **...**

She was going to kill the Weasley twins. Slowly and painfully and with extra hot coals!

It had taken her over an hour to change her complexion back to its natural color. The problem lay in that it hadn't been just a simple color-changing charm. Somehow, the twin terrors had managed to make everyone and everything else see her as bright pink while in her own eyes her skin still was the pale porcelain common to blondes. A color-changing charm tied to either intent or the identity of the observer; if she wasn't nearly furious enough to raze Gryffindor tower she'd be impressed.

Twenty minutes later and nearly to the dungeons and some much-needed rest, she'd calmed down a bit. Yes, she'd been pranked. Yes, she'd been made fun of. No, it hadn't been too horrible; they could have changed her into a pink gerbil instead. Most of her bad reaction must have been due to her mounting frustration over the past few days. If she kept acting like that she'd lose her moral high ground over Weasley and that would not do. And it was a good bit of magic too - shaping spells like that was something she'd soon be trying her hand in herself.

Deciding to let it go - the twins had probably pranked her because she didn't share the spell she'd used on the rat after all - she said the password and entered the Slytherin common room. How unpleasant a coincidence the passphrase was "muggle hunting" that week was the only thing that came to mind as she was greeted by the less than happy faces of Draco Malfoy, Gregory Goyle, Vincent Crabbe, Pansy Parkinson, Graham Montague and Lucian Bole.

"Get inside, mudblood." hissed Malfoy threateningly. "We have things to... discuss."

Of all the bloody times to leave Daphne and Tracey in the library to finish their homework...


	13. Rules of Engagement

**As previously mentioned, this story isn't going to be all sun and roses. In other news, we never see any good duels in the school during the books. I blame it on faculty oversight and on the combatants not being really invested in the outcome. On the other hand, with most adult wizards having access to or favoring one-hit-kill kind of spells, their battles are mostly rocket-tag.  
**

 **Disclaimer: J. Rowling owns Harry Potter. If I did, the action might have been slightly better... and everything else a lot worse.**

 **...**

The situation was bad, Valeria considered as she strode into the Slytherin common room wand in hand. The six arranged against her weren't particularly powerful or exceptionally skilled and weren't upperclassmen. But in a roll call of viciousness and casual cruelty they'd come ahead of most. Even worse, they were Malfoy's usual sycophants from minor or vassal families tied to his own... and Draco had both reason and inclination to wish her harm.

"What do you want, Malfoy?" she asked coolly as she leaned against the nearest wall. Keeping all of them in sight and avoiding being surrounded would help but it wouldn't be enough. The common room was curiously empty of observers or authority figures and given how her last encounter with the blond scion had turned out, that did not bode well.

"Oh, nothing serious, mudblood." he replied airily. "Just to share with you the latest rumors, trade information on the teachers and see how it affects us both." Pansy giggled at Draco's obviously practiced little intro while the rest of the boys glowered. She could see three wands in evidence, one of them ready in Malfoy's hands; not as bad as it could have been but not very good either.

"There are whispers in all four houses you see. People saying mudbloods are better at magic than the purebloods - even in Slytherin!" Malfoy's expression twisted into an ugly scowl, face pale in his rage. Daphne had suggested that one, her pureblood upbringing providing the bait which Tracey's contacts had implemented. Unfortunately they'd been aiming for an incensed Slytherin prince to come call her out, not for him to set an ambush with all his cronies having his back. Plans, mice, men and all that; Valeria nervously waited for an opportunity to run. Her preparations weren't enough for this.

"And professor Snape!" the blond boy's voice shook now, becoming louder and louder. "He called us in his office for breaking inter house unity, docked points for dragging Slytherin's honor in the mud or some such nonsense. Docked points! From me! It's an injustice, that what it is..." Crabbe and Goyle cracked their knuckles for emphasis or intimidation. They, at least, had no need of motivational speeches before attacking her but were following Draco's lead. Maybe they were even letting him vent a bit because that's what the 'boss' needed. Nobody ever accused them of being less than expert minions, after all, and the 'boss' should always have a first go at everything, including loot, talking loudly and beating people up.

Wait, that was it! Now, how to make it work...

"...so we're going to teach you a lesson mudblood. It should quiet the rumors nicely, don't you think?" Draco sneered, Pansy looked eager, and Graham and Lucian shifted a bit in their seats. "A few little stings ought to put you in your place. Firmly behind all of us, licking our boots." Valeria's lips thinned in carefully controlled disgust at the mental image those words inspired. On the other hand, Draco did present her with an opening.

"Yeah, right Malfoy. As if you could ever teach me any kind of lesson." She matched his sneer easily, twirling her wand with a confidence she did not feel.

"WHAT did you say?!" If possible, anger twisted Draco's face even further.

"You heard me." Valeria snorted derisively. "When have you backed your words with your wand? If the only wand you've ever faced was your father's how do you know the rumors aren't true?" She smirked, her casual stance declaring obvious challenge. "Has he started letting you win yet? That builds confidence but little else, you know."

"SHUT THE HELL UP!" Draco exploded from his seat with a roar, dislodging Pansy from his side and throwing her to the floor. Valeria hoped falling on the cold, hard stones hurt; she'd take every advantage she could get. "YOU, YOU, YOU AND YOU!" Malfoy raged on, pointing at Crabbe, Goyle, Montague and Bole. "CLEAR AWAY THIS CRAP!" He gave the closest table a good kick, knocking it over. "PANSY, KEEP AN EYE ON THE MUDBLOOD. IF SHE TRIES ANYTHING, HEX HER!"

Valeria didn't move as the four big boys cleared out the center of the common room. Malfoy had taken the bait but only just. If something went wrong it'd be back to his plan for the six of them to deal out anything nasty and barely survivable they could think of. They were going to do it anyway, in the end. The only reason Malfoy wanted a duel before the festivities was her insult to his magic and family. With luck though, things might turn out a bit differently than he expected...

 **...**

"Do you even know how to duel, mudblood?" Pansy called out as Valeria bowed to Draco, careful to keep everyone else in her field of view too. No reason to invite a hex in the back ahead of schedule. Draco sneered and barely returned the gesture before they both aimed their wands.

"On the count of three, both of you will start casting." Bole, being the oldest, was playing referee; at his announcement, the other three boys smirked and Pansy couldn't help but giggle. Yes, yes, Draco intended to cheat - what a surprise. "The duel is over when one or the other is knocked out or loses their wand and is unable to recover it." Huh, interesting. Maybe Bole was smarter than she'd given him credit for and was only following Malfoy for money and contacts. But two could play the game he was setting up.

"One... Two..."

 _"Mimblewimble!"_

 _"Wingardium Leviosa!"_

Draco Malfoy might have been so spoiled calling him a brat insulted brats everywhere, he might carry around an ego that rivaled one of the castle's towers for size, but a bad wizard he wasn't. Had his curse required the longer incantation, his reflexes would still have allowed him to cast first. As it was, Valeria was still in mid-cast when the Tongue-Tying Curse arrived with deadly accuracy... and was reflected back at Draco by the invisible Shielding Charm she'd been holding since before she entered the common room. There's no such thing as cheating; only victory and trips to the hospital wing.

Valeria's own spell was slower, more powerful but less accurate. She'd never hit a more agile target than her so she didn't even try; she went for Montague instead who was wider than everyone else in the room and was conveniently still sitting in his chair and not expecting any attack whatsoever. Furthermore, he was one of the two older Slytherins present and had his wand out, which made him a major danger. Thus Valeria's Levitation Charm; let him try aiming while he hung upside-down.

Those developments had left most of those present rooted to the spot. Crabbe and Goyle were the first to shake off their surprise. Instead of drawing their wands, they showed excellent initiative and charged Valeria directly. She doubted they'd have been any kind of thread with magic - not with their marks - but two boys larger than her and far stronger eating up the distance between them with leaping steps faster than she could hex them both? She opted to resolve that risk by flicking her wand and launching the still-levitated Montague in their path. The Slytherin third-year was lighter than the massive lump of snow Ronald Weasley had levitated and thrown in their Christmas duel but considerably harder and faster-moving. The slapping sound of the impact was heard even over the angry shouts coming from Pansy and Bole and Draco's unrecognizable mumbling as he fought to speak through his own curse. Three very large boys were reduced to a heap of flailing limbs as they tried to understand how they'd gotten into that predicament, Montague on top of the other two.

 _"Stupefy!"_

A bright-red beam of light from Bole's wand shattered Valeria's shield and knocked her on her backside. Her head hurt, her vision swam, and her limbs felt like lead. Whatever the spell had been, it must have been stronger than what her amateurish _Protego_ could block; the effect had been partially deflected at best. She forced herself to an upright position despite the numbness. Even a momentary delay and one of the other six Slytherins would land a curse and that would be all she wrote.

 _"Ossis Reducto!"_

Valeria's eyes went wide and she frantically tried to jump out of the way, block the attack somehow, do anything! The only reason she could even recognize the Bone-Shattering Curse was her foray into the library's restricted section. No spell she or any other student before OWL-level could cast had a snowball's chance in bloody Hell of stopping it; her resisting his original attack must have Bole using the strongest curse he knew. The dark curse splashed against her gloved right hand she'd been holding as a shield. Dragonskin sizzled but even the protective properties of that material couldn't negate the attack entirely; magic that burned like molten lead seeped into her hand and she felt all the bones up to her wrist cracking one by one.

She screamed, every trace of her previous numbness burned away and replaced by pain, fear and rage. She snapped her thick cherry wand as if wielding a whip and Montague was launched out of the goon pile as if by a cannon. The levitation charm fueled by her burning desire to do to Bole as he'd done to her, the largest Slytherin boy in the common room gathered momentum all the way, his brief moment of flight ending with a tremendous impact that saw both he and his intended target smashed against the nearest stone wall. Montague feebly stirred and groaned. Bole didn't.

Crabbe and Goyle were disentangling themselves as Pansy retrieved her wand and quickly muttered the counter-curse over Draco. She couldn't have that.

 _"Wingardium Leviosa!"_

The sofa was only a little more challenging to lift than Montague had been. She raised it all the way to the low ceiling - at least six feet over her two overgrown classmates still in their prone position - then let it fall. The hit was as loud as the Montague on Bole action though not as damaging. There was a larger impact area, for one thing. For another, ancient wood and canvas yielded more easily than bone.

 _"Everte Statum!"_

 _"Petrificus Totalus!"_

 _"Protego!"_

Valeria's relief at barely managing to raise a new Shielding Charm before Draco's and Pansy's attacks landed was short-lived. Neither curse was as weak as the usual first-year magic and landing together they broke her shield and pushed her a step back. She was forced to recast her shield again and again as her two attackers kept up their barrage, slamming her against a wall. Now every time they broke through it felt like a slap to the face and it was all she could do to hold them off.

Daphne and Tracey had often pushed her into similar situations in practice. Every time that happened, she was forced to surrender within five minutes at best, or her defense faltered and she was taken out at worst. A few slaps only hurt one's dignity; a few hundred were another matter entirely. This time though, she was determined to hold off Malfoy and his bitch as long as possible. They would beat her down in the end but she'd already taken out four other Slytherins by turning their ambush against them, using better tactics and taking advantage of their seriously underestimating her until it was too late. The six of them might spin this however they wanted, lie to the teachers, but they couldn't cover their wounds on their own. The hospital matron would realize what happened and given past injuries Valeria and her friends had prepared just for such an occasion, she would not keep silent...

Several minutes later, Draco's and Pansy's efforts were slowing down for some reason. The pressure from the curse barrage relented bit by bit and it became easier to cast a new shield ahead of the next attack. Why would the two of them stop pushing her when her defense was about to collapse? Why give her an opportunity to catch her breath and maybe even strike back? That was an amateur's mistake!

Then the answer struck her; Draco and Pansy hadn't been practicing dueling for months like she had. They hadn't engaged a friend that fought as viciously as any and was as interested in fighting them as Daphne was in fighting her. They hadn't been engaging in multiple duels one after the other with only a short break between. Draco and Pansy simply did not have the endurance and magical reserves she'd struggled to improve... and keeping up a relentless assault was not an option for them. Unfortunately, they understood this too and weren't too stupid to use it.

 _"Incendio!"_

 _"Wingardium Leviosa!"_

They were learning. While Draco kept sending a lasting tongue of fire against her shield, Pansy struggled to levitate the sofa from over Crabbe and Goyle and move it over Valeria's head. The plan was a good one; a lasting and dangerous if not especially powerful attack that kept her occupied and a heavy weight that would break her overstressed shield and finish the fight. If the two of them weren't trying to horribly curse her into St Mungo's, she'd applaud their inventiveness. Unfortunately for them, they had left it too late.

 _"Lumos!"_

Valeria made her wandlight as bright and sudden as possible, turning her head away at the last moment. In the near-darkness of the Slytherin common room, illuminated only by the fireplace, a soft and unintrusive greenish glow, and Drago's fire-making charm deflected hither and yon by a failing shield, her spell would seem as blindingly radiant as a small sun.

"Gaah, my eyes!"

 _"Petrificus Totalus! Petrificus Totalus!"_

Too busy covering his eyes with his hands to dodge or cast, Malfoy was immobilized and toppled. Pansy on the other hand made a hasty jump to the left and tried to drop the sofa on her. Fortunately, her skill in levitation left much to be desired and she missed by a mile.

 _"Petrificus Tot..."_

 _"Everte Statum!"_

Pansy's shorter incantation threw her back like a kick in the gut. A kick by a centaur... on steroids... whose intelligence she'd insulted. She landed badly, the legs of an overturned chair digging into her back even as her stomach was drafting up eviction notices for her three previous meals. She couldn't dwell on that though as the pug-faced witch had already caught her breath and was raising her wand again.

 _"Titillando!"_

That was Tracey's go-to dueling spell. The petite brunette had a small problem working purely physical magic so she relied on indirect or mental effects. The Tickling Hex was a favorite of hers, impeding opponents both physically and in their casting. And unlike _Rictumsempra_ , the Tickling Charm, this one was stackable. Tracey had proven that in their duels and on a mouse they'd found. So while Pansy was about to shake off her not very practiced use of it, she hit her again.

"HAHAHA... s-stop... HAHA... f-filthy mu..."

 _"Titillando!"_

A third casting had Pansy shaking in laughter on the floor, unable to even stand let alone fight or throw curses. Valeria waited over her until the hexes run their course, not trusting the Slytherin girl out of her sight and not knowing how the Full Body Bind would interact with the magic already on her. In the end, Pansy was drenched in sweat, struggling to take in gulps of the air prolonged laughter had denied her. Coupled with her previous exhaustion, the threat she posed was negligible. She'd fared far better than Tracey's mouse; after three castings the much smaller rodent had kept shaking until it had perished. She and her friends had wondered if the same could be done to humans but until she found herself some real murderous enemies, she was not about to try it to a schoolgirl like Pansy. Valeria kicked the wand off her loose fingers instead.

On the other hand, never do an enemy a small injury; it was a lesson she'd learned early with bullies. The stinging hex she sent in Pansy's belly made the other girl gasp and try to jump up. She failed, and the stinging hexes that followed soon forced her into tears. After she was certain she'd thoroughly beat any will to fight out of the other girl, she stumbled across the common room and towards her next target.

Draco Malfoy's too-wide eyes as he saw her leaning over his prone and bound form were very satisfying.

 **...**

The Slytherin common room had taken on a deep orange tint as a soothing warmth beat back the icy cold of the Black Lake. Tables and chairs were burning merrily as the resulst of Draco Malfoy's ill-conceived _Incendio_ slowly spread. The sofa used as an improvised weapon by both sides lay broken where it had been dropped, other furniture also shattered by deflected spells. The ceiling was hidden behind a thickening layer of smoke, a few of the portraits already blackened and one of them empty.

Valeria couldn't bring herself to care; she found the flames rather beautiful. It was possible, even probable, that she'd taken one too many whacks in the head during the miniature battle but why bother? It wasn't as if light concussions were that bad - the dizziness would go away. Eventually. Maybe. Who the bloody hell cared?

Not Pansy, certainly. Pug-face was too busy lying on the floor wrapped around her own knees and moaning pitifully. Maybe she'd learn not to set up any more ambushes in the bathroom with her friend Millicent Bulstrode. Not Draco either. He only wished for a mouth at that moment. He didn't have a working one right then and he had to scream. Valeria could tell, despite the Full Body Bind; it was the eyes. Always the eyes. And definitely not Crabbe or Goyle. Crawling away from the spreading flames was using up all their energy. Bole and Montague hadn't moved yet. At least she thought so - they were all the way across the common room and she couldn't be bothered to check up on them. So who was left?

Valeria herself was sitting in a comfortable, three-legged, slightly torn armchair, staring at nothing in particular. She cradled her right hand, the one with a couple dozen broken bones under a blackened dragon-leather glove too tight to remove. Her legs wouldn't support her and her voice had been reduced to a hoarse whisper. She was also bruised from head to toe and too tired to cast. In the end it didn't matter whether she cared; she couldn't do anything about it either way. How long since it all begun? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? More? What if...

"MORGANA'S TITS! WHAT THE BLOODY HELL HAPPENED HERE?"

Valeria saw Gemma dash in through the common room door in the corner of her eye. The fifth year prefect's jaw was trying for the vertical jump record and her eyes were the size of small moons. Oh, good. Someone who cared had finally arrived. With that cheerful thought she fainted dead away...


	14. Red and White

**Real life problems delayed this chapter for a few days. My entire country (I live in Greece) is in a bad situation - turns out many of our governments over the past forty years took loans they shouldn't have then ate up the money for their own ends... and now we're facing bankruptcy.**

 **In other news I love showing how competent Hagrid can be, despite being naive and uneducated. There are many hints about his work as a gamekeeper in the novels for example, but it remains mostly in the background. Growing and breeding things is a given, but what about scale? There are over half a thousand people in Hogwarts, not to mention all of Hagrid's pets and experiments. A cerberus alone (going by the movie size) would be a few hundred times as massive as a large dog and with an appetite to match. There's also a couple hundred Thestrals to handle too, which aren't exactly small.**

 **Disclaimer: Not J.K. Rowling. if in doubt, just check my (nonexistent) bank account.**

 **...**

The smell of antiseptic and preserved potion ingredients revealed where she was even before the brightness and the white walls did. Why hospitals, especially wizarding hospitals, all shared that color scheme Valeria would never understand. Tombs were white. Old, sun-bleached bones were white. It didn't inspire much confidence, to be treated in a place that might as well be a mausoleum.

"Oh good, you're awake." Came theapparently indifferent but very welcome voice from her left. "About time for lessons too - it's monday morning."

"Don't mind the ice queen. We're both relieved you're OK." The friendly ribbing of the voice in her right was no less welcome. "She just has an image to maintain."

Tracey and Daphne flanked her bed in the uncomfortable seats available to visitors. Narrow, angular works of hard wood with no padding whatsoever, they were only grudgingly provided by the Hogwarts mediwitch to anyone within her domain that had no pressing need to be there. Most visitors, be they friends or family, she often chased away after only a few minutes so why bother with anything more? That Daphne and Tracey had braved not only open association with a "mudblood" but also madam Pomfrey's displeasure to be here when she would wake was... Valeria couldn't describe all that it meant to her. Apart from Claude, she'd never had a friend in her life. She often wondered why...

"Hey, blondie junior, don't be spacing out on us!" Tracey prodded her impatiently when she didn't immediately respond. "We have so much to talk about and it's seven o'clock already." The petite brunette folded her hands as she stared down at Valeria's prone form. "If you make us miss breakfast, I'm so hexing you."

"You think something's wrong?" Daphne said with a pensive frown and a raised pale eyebrow. "Madam Pomfrey did say she'd be fine but..."

"Don't get your knickers in a twist, princess." Tracey snorted at the aristocratic blonde's affronted expression. "It's only been two days because the matron had to vanish twelve bones and regrow them individually to ensure the bone-breaking curse was gone for good." She bent low then stage-whispered to Valeria in equal amusement and fondness. "She'd been worried all weekend long but didn't know how to express it. That's purebllod upbringing to you."

"Prat." Daphne retorted, her face falling back into its usual unreadable mask. Valeria sighed. The Greengrasses were one of the oldest, purest, most conservative families in wizarding Britain. Even after Daphne mentioned how they were surprisingly flexible when it came to inheritance issues (whatever that meant) and active pursuit of pureblood supremacy, she couldn't make head or tails of Daphne's reason for befriending her. Tracey was right; the taller blonde did have problems socializing openly but Valeria suspected there was something else behind it. Better not push with questions just yet...

"I'm glad you two are here. Madam Pomfrey is somewhat lacking in her bedside manner. Not to mention she treats students like mushrooms." She smiled, the last traces of apprehension about her surroundings fading away. "Now tell me everything. Don't keep me in the dark and fed with b..."

"Ahem." Daphne's abrupt interaction and narrowed eyes reminded her that most purebloods were too serious by half; their insistence on always speaking correctly and politely proved it. She mentally noted down to change that if she ever conquered Britain or something. "Gemma went straight to the headmaster; we heard professor Snape complain about it later. By the time any professors arrived, there were over a dozen students there at the common room just staring at the fire."

"I'd never seen professor Dumbledore furious before." Tracey piped in a far more serious tone. "He was scary; snuffed out the flames, repaired the whole room and cleared the air with a flick of his wand. Then put all seven of you in enchanted sleep, made you hover and had Filch and McGonagal escort you to the hospital wing. He argued a bit with professor Snape but we couldn't hear anything - some magical silence, I guess."

"Then the strangest thing happened." Daphne's nonexpression betrayed the barest hint of curiosity as she took up the story but that was all. "He summoned all your wands to him, tapped them with his own and cast some spell none of us recognized. All seven wands started shooting jets of light, as if they were casting. But they weren't... and the jets were tiny and a bit ghost-like. There were dozens of them, hundreds even - I knew some from our many duels. Tiny shields, and fire-conjuring, and a few hexes but there were too many images to tell for certain." She paused for a bit, perplexed. "Nobody knew what to make of the spectacle though, except Dumbledore. He kept staring around the room, whispering to himself about ambushes and counter-ambushes and necessity. We thought he'd gone mad."

"Be honest Daphne, most Slytherins think he's mad anyway." Tracey jibed. Valeria wasn't sure she agreed with her but didn't know what to do with her suspicions. Now that she was awake, quite a few people would be asking quite a few questions, and drawing even more attention to herself would not be very prudent.

"Professor Snape was furious too." Daphne continued, ignoring the brunette's comment. "Especially after madam Pomfrey saw Bole. She sent him straight to St Mungo's for emergency treatment." Uncharacteristically, Daphne gritted her teeth, her delicate fingers gripping the edge of Valeria's hospital bed so hard that bones creaked. "Good riddance."

"What about the rest?" Valeria inquired, deciding to drop the matter of Bole entirely.

"Graham, Gregory and Vincent are sulking in the common room." Tracey gleefully filled her in. "They only had a few bones to mend - physically that is. Their pride is another matter. Did you really beat them up with a couch?"

"I wasn't sure I could curse them all in time!" Valeria said defensively. "And they asked for it."

"You should follow my advice and learn more curses. The Full-Body Bind is too slow." She couldn't help but nod in agreement with Daphne's advice, remembering how Pansy of all people had almost knocked her out before she could finish her longer incantation. Why did the older dueling books in the library suggest it as an excellent option? Was there something she was missing?"

"You're spacing out again, love." Tracey said, breaking her train of thought. "Anyway, your last two victims didn't stay here long. Draco and Pansy were out of the infirmary as soon as they could. They were back soon enough though." The brunette smiled nastily. "We saw them yesterday, didn't we Daphne? Asking for dreamless sleep potions, weren't they?"

"This is no laughing matter." Daphne cautioned them. "Until now, you were just a convenient target for their bullying, Valeria. They just saw you as the pathetic mudblood their parents always taught them about. But now?" The Slytherin girl shook her silvery mane, worry in her eyes. "Now they've a credible enemy that threatens them; you'll never again be beneath their notice - or their families'. Besides, being thoroughly trounced by someone they outnumbered six to one is proof of their neglected skills and stupidity even they won't miss."

"You think they'll be back for round two?" Valeria asked as she tested her healing hand. The fingers still hurt abominably but worked. Madam Pomfrey did good work.

"Of course they will." Daphne snorted. "The bad thing with appeals to self-preservation is that the best way to survival is destroying the threat, not fleeing it. We have much to do before we can convince Draco and his posse flight is the best option."

"We?" Valeria asked tentatively.

"We." confirmed her two friends with one voice.

 **...**

Albus Percival Wolfric Brian Dumbledore sat in his comfortable armchair, behind the ancient but excellently preserved mahogany desk in the headmaster's office and contemplated the student before him. The many delicate devices he'd personally crafted and enchanted to track, observe and pass information on Hogwarts, the Ministry, the Wizengamot and several persons of interest clicked and clanged pleasantly as they usually did, filling the momentary silence. Most wizards over the world considered him a master of Transfiguration, the greatest duelist and sorcerer in recent history and a fair hand at alchemy. While mostly true, such titles were somewhat misleading. Information was far more important a commodity in his many jobs and positions than any other skill or achievement. Being able to both become invisible and detect the invisible with no apparent action or word for example had already allowed him to set young Harry down the first steps to fulfilling his destiny earlier in the year. Information had helped win the last war. Information had won over his old friend even thought he'd wielded the wand he now claimed as his own. He'd been in the process of improving a decade-old invention of his to allow the user to find and observe friends from afar no matter the intervening distance or barriers when the current situation had reared its ugly head.

"Lemon drop, miss Campbell?" he offered politely.

"No, thank you, headmaster." The young Slytherin fidgeted uncomfortably but betrayed no emotion. Alas, members of that House learned the same lessons at a far earlier age than he had. Some truths were too harsh if introduced at the wrong time, doing more harm than good and often blinding people to other realities just as important.

"Do you know why you're here, spending this very fine afternoon with a boring old man instead of being out, enjoying the surprisingly good weather with your friends?" Silence fell again as the smart young witch contemplated the question. They both knew the answer to it, of course. But answers were far from being the sole point of questions and what was not said was often as crucial as what was.

"It was the faculty's fault, headmaster." she stated gravely. Interesting response; not something any student would claim when standing in this office. A light touch of Legilimency, just enough to ferret out deception but not enough to be an invasion of privacy, confirmed she believed what she said. Perspective was very much an issue with the Mind Arts, as it was with mental potions and magical vows. It was one of the reasons such things were not fully trusted in a formal court and rarely used.

"Elaborate please."

"Well, Hogwarts is supposed to be our home. Our Houses our family." The girl tossed her hair angrily. "Family doesn't hurl dark curses your way."

"I suppose you're right, at that." Dumbledore agreed thoughtfully. The portraits in the Slytherin common room were of former members of the House; much like the Slytherin students they could hardly be trusted to reliably report the bullying of a muggleborn, especially with how rare muggleborn or muggle-raised students were for that house. Thus he'd resorted to employing _Priori Incantantem_ on the seven students' wands, reconstructing the entire fight by the spells they'd used. A rare moment of surprise had come at the sheer volume of spells cast during the duel and, after a bit of reconstruction, their uses. Severus had hardly believed it when he shared the results with him... unfortunately, Dumbledore himself had experience of similar situations in the past. Or rather, one such situation - and parallels between them was what troubled him.

"Miss Campbell, regardless of your justifications did you actually try involving a teacher? Did you try to avoid such confrontations, head them off before they begun?" Dumbledore thought not. From what he'd seen, the young witch was frightfully precocious and far too independent for that. She was far more likely to...

"Of course I did!" she said indignantly, interrupting his ruminations once more.

"Indeed? How so?" He saw her hesitating a bit before answering and focused on his Legilimency again. Whether she trusted him with the truth and how much of it would be the deciding factor here.

"Bullies are lazy, headmaster. My friends and I made them believe I was already being confronted by somebody else so they wouldn't bother." Truth, if not all of it. Undertones of smugness at the successful manipulation, contempt for bullies in general, fondness for her friends and anger at the whole situation. Much better than the alternative - that she had real friends at all was a huge relief. "The plan failed though - as soon as faculty noticed I was told to stop. Apparently, the image of the House and its Head is more important than student safety." Anger showing through more and more. Oh dear.

"Violence is rarely the answer, young lady. You should have come to me." Dumbledore raised his hand to forestall the argument he knew was coming even as his young student jumped off her seat in protest. "Even when it is the answer it should be left to adult witches and wizards to handle, at least due to their greater chances of success if for no other reason." Miss Campbell sat back down but crossed her hands mutinously. Albus Dumbledore sighed tiredly at all the hats he had to wear, all the situations he had to handle ever so delicately. He had often considered trying to help Severus fix his behavior, or at least limit his excesses. But the young potions-master was already under enough pressure in a teaching position he had never chosen and under a Vow he'd only grudgingly taken. In his pride and bitterness Severus Snape would never accept such interference and Dumbledore would not grant him the position he so loved; he valued the man's life and services too much to see him dead or gone within a year.

"Students were seriously wounded through your actions, yourself among them. And can you claim the situation was resolved?" He couldn't fault her the satisfaction of defeating her would-be tormentors, only the viciousness of her response. But a muggleborn in the so-called Snake Pit had few options and he as headmaster fewer still. Lucius Malfoy had already demanded expulsion and while the rest of the governors didn't share that opinion, a punishment had to be given. There was one thing he could do for her though.

"Miss Campbell, for putting a student in St. Mungo's you have detention until his treatment is complete." he told her sadly. "You will spend your evenings helping Hagrid in his gamekeeper duties, away from the comfort of your House. Perhaps some quiet and hard work will curb your desire to engage your housemates in unapproved duels."

Seeing her face shift from worry to surprise to elation he returned her smile. He was now far less worried for her... and about her. Valeria Campbell was not the sly, ruthless manipulator a past student of his had been. Yes, she was powerful, mistrustful of authority and vicious for her age - but also highly emotional, capable of friendship and happiness, and didn't seem to mind being removed from the politics of her House for a time for her own protection. He hoped the time he'd given her would return some peace into her life; every twelve year old deserved to be free from worries. Maybe she'd even like and befriend Rubeus; the gentle giant was a kid at heart, never having grown up even after fifty years.

 **...**

The gamekeeper's hut was a simple wooden construction right on the line that separated the Hogwarts grounds from the Forbidden Forest. From a distance it seemed small, a singe door, four leaning walls, a roof, a chimney and two windows, until one remembered the gamekeeper's dimensions. The door alone was twelve feet high and six wide and even so the giant of a man barely fit through; the rest of the hut was built to scale. What looked like a stable could be seen at one side but wasn't; it was a doghouse for the gamekeeper's near horse-sized boarhound. Valeria had to hastily cast a Shielding Charm to avoid the horrendous fate of being trampled over and thoroughly drooled upon by the vicious-seeming but actually friendly black beast. She wondered if it had anything to do with the barking she'd heard from the forbidden third-floor corridor the day she'd gone after professor Snape.

"Hello there!" the giant boomed as he marched out of the forest. Wearing his massive patchwork fur coat and carrying a crossbow wider than she was tall, she loomed even larger in the evening gloom. "Yeh be Valeria then? Bin expectin' ye, I have."

"That's my name, yes." she smiled up at the towering friendly man. "I didn't quite catch yours, though. Good evening."

"Oh, me name's Hagrid. Pleased ter meet yeh - even if yeh bin cursin' when yeh shouldn'ta." He winked. "Good job." Valeria giggled. She hadn't expected her detention to be very unpleasant given headmaster Dumbledore's last few hints but the gamekeeper's reaction pleasantly surprised her. Maybe he'd been in Gryffindor or didn't like Malfoy. If the latter, she approved.

"So... what will I be doing?" she asked looking up at him and the many tools half-hanging out of his coat's innumerable pockets, his well-used boots and his dirty but intact clothing. For such a huge man to walk through the forest with no tears or holes upon him in evidence, he must be a very experienced woodsman, to say nothing of the lack of wounds given the number of magical beasts that lived there. She wasn't sure what she could help him with. She was a city girl; the countryside was beyond her experience.

"Oh nothin' much. Helpin' wi' the garden, followin me inter the woods, simple stuff." He petted the huge boarhound whose name was (quite appropriately) 'Fang', then opened the huge door and went into the hut. "Come in, will ya?"

Valeria followed him inside, looking curiously at everything. The hut was just a single cavernous room around the size of the first-year Slytherin dormitory. On one side there was a simple bed several times the size of her own with logs thicker than her torso instead of legs and many layers of fur instead of sheets. Cupboards took up every nook and cranny, full of all kinds of substances from sugar to dried dragon meat to acromantula venom. An entire corner was taken up by a fireplace large enough for her to stand inside, made of hewn stone rather than brick and mortar. Despite its size, it was clean and well-kept, with no burn marks anywhere nearby. She'd once heard Malfoy repeating a rumor about the gamekeeper's incompetence but everything she'd seen so far proved it was obviously false. The ceiling was no less interesting; dozens of drying herbs hung overhead, often of the kind that couldn't be cultivated and had to grow wild. Fungi and pieces of bark joined them as well as... her breath caught.

"Hagrid, is that unicorn hair?" The silvery bundle was longer than her arm and as thick as her thigh. Given the difficulty in getting even a single hair from an adult unicorn... that bundle alone represented more money than she'd ever seen in her life. And if her eyes weren't playing tricks on her, the tips of many unicorn horns could be seen peaking from behind one of the higher shelves.

"'Course it is! Wha' o' it?" the friendly giant said, unaware of her gobsmacked expression. "Bin handlin' the herd meself fer years an' years. Poor sods be desparate fer groomin'." He waved the huge pink umbrella of his at the fireplace and flames started dancing merrily inside. Their warmth quickly filled the hut, chasing away the mid-February chill. And with that feat of magic her mind left the wealth of materials Hagrid so casually displayed for later and focused on the original desire she had ever since she'd met the gamekeeper for the first time. The one all the lessons, the bullying, the planning and the hectic pace of her life since the beginning of the year had made her forget but Dumbledore's detention had reminded her of. She owed the old wizard a big thank-you for that.

"Hagrid, how did you light that fire?"

"Wha? Ah... er... ehm... magic?" for some reason the gamekeeper was really flustered about it, like a small kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

"Of course it was magic!" she said impatiently. "But how did you do it? No incantation, no wand-motions... no wand for that matter."

"Err... best yeh na be askin' 'bout it." Hagrid sushed her then looked over both shoulders as if to confirm nobody was watching. "I'm nae supposedta do magic."

"Why not?" Valeria asked, hands on hips. Oh no, he wasn't getting out of showing her that easily. "I mean, you're the first wizard I've seen do magic like that and it's bloody awesome. There are mentions of nonverbal casting in our sixth-year books but nothing as advanced as that."

"Yeh... yeh think it was good?" Hagrid asked, chagrined.

"I wouldn't be trying to have you show me if it weren't!" Valeria exclaimed in exasperation. What was wrong with the man?

"Right... well... ah... if yeh think... OK!" He abruptly sat on his huge bed, making the heavy wooden construction creak dangerously. "I'm gonna show yeh, but yeh not be spreadin' it to noone, yeh hear?"

Valeria nodded vigorously and climbed on one of Hagrid's too-large chairs. This "detention" was going to be awesome.

 **...**

"So that's what you're doing all evening?" Daphne asked as she stared at the trowel in Valeria's hands distastefully. "What do they think you are, a house elf?" Valeria rolled her eyes at her friend's indignation. She and Tracey were sitting on couch-sized pumkins, watching her work in Hagrid's garden.

"Naah. Only a young witch whose violent tendencies must be stamped out through backbreaking labor." She countered then did what she'd been preparing over the past week for. A single tap of her wand turned the trowel into a full-sized shovel. Another flick at the hard ground and she used the trowel-turned-shovel to open a long ditch with one hand, the softened earth offering as much resistance as foam. She laughed at her friends' saucer-wide eyes.

"Hagrid is a better teacher than most people think." she told them as she dropped a few seeds into the ditch, flattened the ground with the shovel and dismissed her softening charm. "You can't conjure or transfigure food with magic, you know. All that's possible is transforming materials to the final product, multiplying it if you already have some or helping it grow." She pointed at the huge pumkins Daphne and Tracey were sitting on. "The latter is what Hagrid's been doing - for near fifty years. Pumkin juice and pie for six hundred people means a pumkin that size every day."

The three of them stared at the huge crop, then at the rest of Hagrid's garden and facilities. Cabbages, carrots and an assortment of vegetables grew unobtrusively at the forest's edge despite it not being spring yet. Further along, chickens of impressive sizes and colors could be seen - must be the flobberworm diet. Evidence that, when taken all together, proved Hagrid's title of "gamekeeper" was well-deserved, even when few people noticed his contribution.

"A half-giant does all that? With magic?" Tracey said in disbelief but rapidly wilted under Valeria's furious gaze.

"Keep your preconceptions to yourself, thank you!" she said firmly. "Half the wizards in Britain can't do nonverbal spells reliably but that's all I've ever seen Hagrid do. He showed me his enlargement charm - it took me a week to get it to barely work and I have a wand."

"He doesn't?" Daphne asked incredulously.

"Not one I've seen. He uses an umbrella of all things. It's a garish pink color, too." She led the three of them to another part of the garden Hagrid had harvested that morning and started work on planting the next crop.

"He is teaching you?" Tracey said, traces of disbelief still in her tone and expression. For all her half-blood status her friend could often be quite short-sighted while Daphne preferred to reserve judgement until presented with evidence.

"Only a few things. He isn't supposed to be using magic." Valeria looked towards the forest where Hagrid had disappeared soon after she'd arrived for the evening's "detention". She'd accompanied him only on short trips during the day so far and had not seen anything dangerous in it. Maybe it was for the best.

"That's odd. Why isn't he supposed to use magic?" Daphne asked with a frown. Valeria knew that expression; it was the same one the taller blonde had when working on one of their plots.

"No idea. Haven't managed to get him to tell me yet but it must have been something serious if he refuses to talk about it after fifty years."

"Will you teach us?" Tracey asked, once again eager.

"Of course." Valeria agreed, escorting the three of them next to the hut. The garden was done for that day but there was work still. Nothing she could do without Hagrid there though so it was a good time to catch up with her schoolwork. With no bullies to worry about, it should only take her an hour or two.

"Just keep it to yourselves, will you? I don't want to get Hagrid into trouble..."


	15. Here Be Dragons

**Speeding up my posting for a couple of days to make up for lost time. We're nearing the end of the Philosopher's Stone - there's only two or three chapters left - so time to butcher the plot a bit more to set up things for future books. Also, some interaction between the Gryffindor boys and the Slytherin girls coming up. No, not that kind. You'll have to wait at least until third year for that. :)**

 **Disclaimer: If I were J. , Hagrid would have fulfilled his greatest dream. Since I'm not, there's legions of children that avoided PTSD from reading about Death Eaters being munched on by something with far too many teeth and/or heads.**

 **...**

"I can't believe you three fell for Malfoy's trap, of all people." Valeria commented as she led Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Neville towards Hagrid's hut. "I mean, dueling at midnight up the Astronomy tower? That's the time of the heaviest prefect and faculty patrols in the one place that is always patrolled for obvious reasons!"

"And what would those reasons be?" asked Weasley, his face crimson from either embarasment or anger.

"You would trust me, a snake, to tell you the truth?" Valeria asked back, pale eyebrows rising mockingly. "Far better to ask a Gryffindor girl."

"I will!" the redhead almost shouted.

"You do that." She hoped he would. Of all the not-so-secret designated snogging zones in the castle, the Astronomy tower was the one preferred by Gryffindors the most. Gemma had told her, Daphne and Tracey so over a bottle of smuggled Firewhiskey a couple of weeks ago.

"Hey, ah... Valeria... can I ask you something?" Contrary to professor Snape's beliefs, Harry Potter was far less comfortable with attention than others in his House - or hers for that matter. She had expected the Boy-Who-Lived to have a far larger head after all the hero-worship but in their few interactions since had been pleasantly surprised. That was one reason she tried to curb her usual aggressive response... somewhat.

"You just did." she informed him with a smile. "But don't let that stop you, this is a school after all."

"Right..." he paused for a moment as if reconsidering but then went right on "What did really happen between you and Malfoy? We've only heard rumors."

"About you thrashing the Slytherin common room..." Neville mumbled from the rear of their little group. Despite their tutoring lessons earlier in the year, the Longbottom scion hadn't fully overcome his timidity yet. He had been getting better though, no longer drawing professor Snape's ire in potions due to mistakes or accidents. Valeria wondered if a couple dueling sessions wouldn't give him more confidence... better talk to Daphne and Tracey about that.

"Malfoy and his gang attacked me. I fought back." No reason not to share the gist of it; no love was lost between the three of them and the ponce of Slytherin. "Fortunately, I was more prepared for the six of them than they were for me."

"Riiight... because you're such a great duelist you can take on six blokes at once!" Weasley mocked her. "Come off your high horse, mylady Snake and..." Valeria stopped dead and scowled at the annoying redhead.

"For one thing Weasley, your attitude is getting on my nerves." She drew her thick Cherry wand but resisted the impulse to hex him then and there. His brothers wouldn't like it and besides, what would that prove? That she was his better at magic? She already knew that from their shared classes. So... "For another, here's why I am such a great duelist." She brandished her wand deliberately slowly while Weasley scrambled for his own.

 _"Petrificus Total..."_

 _"Everte Statum!"_

The attack didn't come from Weasley who, in his surprise, had yet to draw his wand properly. It came from behind her back and crashed on her invisible Shielding Charm with significant force. Unlike most other opponents though, Harry Potter managed to dodge his own reflected jinx even when caught by total surprise.

"As you can see, there's more to dueling than throwing off the knockback jinx professor Quirrel taught us months ago." Valeria said smugly. "Drawing your wand quickly is one of those things." Seeing the boys hesitate, she returned her wand in her pocket before a real fight broke out.

"By the way Harry, good reflexes. And jinxing someone in the back? Smart." She winked.

"Err... thanks, I guess." The black-haired boy wasn't exactly thrilled with her compliment. "How did you... reflect the spell?"

"When you've been pranked or bullied as many times as I have, maintaining a Shield Charm all day long becomes a priority." She started walking towards Hagrid's hut again. "Maybe now that Malfoy is trying for targets other than me you should learn it too."

"Maybe I will..."

Beat Malfoy in a duel, get rid of him for a month. Teach others to beat Malfoy for you, get rid of him for the rest of your life.

 **...**

"Hey Hagrid, open up! You got three more ickle firsties for detention!" Valeria said as she knocked on the half-giant's front door.

"Speak for yourself." the tall redhead boy huffed. "You're the only small kid here."

"Relax Weasley. Are you always so arbitrarily contrary?"

"No!"

Valeria rolled her eyes at that and knocked on the hut's door again. Getting no reply, she frowned at the smoke coming out of the chimney, Fang sleeping in his not-so-little house and Hagrid's crossbow leaning against the wall.

"That's odd. It's not like Hagrid not answering the door when in, or leaving a lit fireplace behind when going outside." She pushed the door but it didn't budge, not even when she tried the unlocking charm.

"Maybe we should come back later?" Neville suggested, trying to stare everywhere at once. "We're too close to the woods here."

"Cheer up Neville, there's nothing in the forest more dangerous than professor Snape and we have lessons with him every week." She couldn't resist ribbing the timid boy every so often. She hoped in time she'd get laughs out of him rather than nervousness. Now, why didn't her unlocking charm work?

"That's what I'm worried about..." Neville muttered and Harry and Weasley awkwardly patted him in the back in support. As if that would work - boys!

"Aha!" Hagrid had an iron bolt on his door from the inside, rather than a lock. Simple, yes, but as it wasn't actually locked _'Alohomora'_ was useless on it. It also happened to be nine feet up, which complicated matters. While trying to find a solution to the problem, she wondered if Hagrid used it for added security against wizards or because he just didn't want to bother with a lock. Hmm... maybe...

"Which one of you is better with the levitation charm?" she asked the three boys, sighing when Weasley said he was.

"Can you see the metal bolt in the gap between door and wall? Try to levitate it open."

"Maybe we shouldn't." Harry said and it was almost a command. "Breaking into Hagrid's home is wrong!"

"Normally, I'd agree with you..." Valeria said without really believing it "but we were supposed to meet him today. You got detention and were sent here; there's no way he wasn't notified. So something's off. What if he's in his hut, too hurt to answer? We're just checking up on him."

"OK, but if you're wrong we leave at once." When did Harry Potter become so assertive? She wasn't sure she liked it; Daphne's bossiness was enough for anyone. Maybe she'd throw them at each other and only have to deal with the survivor. Weasley managed to open the door for them in under a minute and Valeria nodded at him. If she'd tried chances were she'd ripped the bolt off or burned the door down but feeding the boy compliments was beyond her. He was already tall enough anyway.

Hagrid lay collapsed on his massive bed, face red even in his sleep. As if his massive snores weren't bad enough, his every breath filled the air with the stench of an entire pub's worth of cheap liquor. Apparently, he'd drunk himself to a stupor. But that wasn't the worst. That place was reserved for the foot-long ovoid of dark brown right in the middle of the roaring fireplace.

"Wow! My brother Charlie has told me stories about these things." Weasley said as he approached the huge egg despite the sweltering heat. A bit more and Hagrid's hut would spontaneously combust. "It must have cost a fortune!"

"Hagrid has a fortune." Valeria said, nodding towards the bundle of unicorn hair. "I don't think money ever mattered to him though. I'm far more worried about how illegal it is."

"Merlin!" exclaimed Neville. "Is that... a dragon egg?"

 **...**

The following weeks were an exercise in patience and keeping up a Shield Charm at all times. While very interesting from a magical viewpoint, dragons were dangerous even as babies. Norbert, as Hagrid had affectionately named the Norwegian Ridgeback, wasn't a threat to someone with Hagrid's strength, stamina and magic resistance and wouldn't be for a long time. Twelve year old witches and wizards however were far more squishy... and flammable... and susceptible to poisons. What was more, Hagrid's childish enthusiasm for the baby dragon and the long hours required for handling it meant somebody else had to do much of Hagrid's job. Valeria counted herself lucky her 'detention' was finally over but Harry, Neville and the Weasley did not get away so easily. Hagrid had even guilted her into helping a few times when it was proven she could fend off baby dragon attacks better than the boys. She finally had to teach the three of them the Shield Charm in the interest of survival and more dragon-free afternoons. They took to it quite well - even Neville - which shows that sufficient motivation is the best teacher of all.

Unfortunately, the dragon was growing - and not only in size. The day he reached three feet in length, a sudden lunge had broken through an overconfident Weasley's weak shield and baby Norbert proved its carnivorous nature with abandon by latching on the boy's arm with its growing but already sharp teeth. Valeria had managed to lock the dragon in a Full-Body-Bind over Hagrid's protests and Weasley had run for it.

"Hagrid, be reasonable. Norbert is growing as if on a diet of Swelling Solution and nutrient potions and his magic resistance is improving too. Soon we won't be able to control him!" The giant didn't seem to be listening, playing tug with the baby and ignoring the occasional bite. Luckily for him, his giant's constitution ignored the poison in the bites. Weasley had not been so fortunate; after refusing to see madam Pomfrey for several days he'd finally been forced to go to the hospital wing after he'd collapsed in class and his bloated arm was revealed.

"Your hut is made of wood, Hagrid!" Harry supported her. "At this rate, Norbert will either not fit here in a month or two, or your home will burn down in dragonfire!" But it was no use. The half-giant put them to work in the garden so as to "not scare the baby" were his exact words. Valeria decided to help Harry finish it even though her detention was over; they needed to talk.

"We must do something!" she said urgently as they worked on engorging a new batch of pumkins. "I don't want Hagrid to lose his job but at this rate it's inevitable. Dragons can be conditioned, yes, but not in a wooden hut. And what if he eats a student?"

"Not sure what we can do though..." Distracted, Harry applied the charm too fast and she had to Shield the pumkin before it exploded. "I mean, you saw how he is. He's never going to let Norbert go."

"True, that." They both searched for a solution for a long time but didn't come up with anything. "What do the others think?" Valeria had talked to Daphne and Tracey about it but the two of them were very serious about their lack of interest. So serious Tracey had used her signature Tickling Hex until Valeria was too out of breath to talk about it.

"Ron's not talking to me." Harry said, shaking his head. "Can't say I blame him - his arm took days to get well. And Neville is, well, Neville. Maybe we should talk to a teacher and..."

"Not happening." Valeria said curtly. "Professor Snape is many things but a supporter of illegal dragon-breeding? Not on your life. I can't see McGonagal being any better either."

"If only we could just get the dragon somewhere safe. Away from students and Hagrid's flammable hut I mean." Harry finished with his portion of the work and the two of them returned the tools to Hagrid's house. A giant singing lullabies to a dragon could still be heard from inside, occasionally interrupted by a screech or a small roar of fire. "Dragons grow in the wild, don't they? Even here in Britain there are magical areas where they roam free, aren't there?"

Hmm, that was an idea. They might be able to convince Hagrid the dragon needed to be in a more natural environment. Grow better, get more exercise and free-range food. Hagrid would want him to be happy but where would they find... Valeria stopped dead, staring at Hagrid's hut.

"Harry, you're a genius!" she exclaimed, happy enough to throw in a compliment.

"I am?" the Boy-Who-Lived asked doubtfully.

"Oh yes! I know how to convince Hagrid now - it's perfect." She dragged him into the hut, eager to share the good news with the half-giant.

Beyond the hut the Forbidden Forest, a magical area full of beasts and magical creatures of all kinds since before Hogwarts was built, loomed ominously...


	16. The Mirkwood Gambit

**This chapter was a doozy. Many points converging, Valeria is finally introduced to the original book's central plot. Events are already going down a different path, and more major points of divergence are coming up. Speaking of the original novel, we never did learn where Hagrid raised Fluffy, the "golden trio" never met serious danger in the Forbidden Forest that wasn't plot-related, and how Hagrid could handle over a hundred Thestrals, a Cerberus, taking care of the unicorn herd, meeting with not-so-friendly centaurs and keeping good relationship with an acromantula colony was kept to the background. At least he is the most consistently competent guy in the novels, punting aurors and knocking death-eaters down the length of the Great Hall with one blow and all.**

 **Disclaimer: based on the original works by J. for fun, not profit. I am not J. ; not enough English ancestry for that. Or children.**

 **...**

"Hagrid, where did you raise Fluffy?"

Valeria, Neville and Harry had been trying to convince Hagrid to relocate Norbert in the Forbidden Forest for days, while their remaining friends kept a safe distance. The dragon would be happier in the wilderness than inside the giant's hut or most any other arrangement Hagrid could make on short notice. There it would be safe from the ministry and their cute-creature-hunting death-squads (i.e. the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures) and could grow up without being pestered by curious Hogwarts students (or more importantly, eating them). But no matter what they said, the gamekeeper would not be convinced; he loved Norbert too much. She found it cute, despite Harry's vehement opposition. Some of her father's colleagues treated their own dangerous possessions in a similar manner.

"How'd yeh be knowin' 'bout Fluffy?" Hagrid demanded, obviously surprised at Harry's question. Valeria shared the feeling.

"Who is Fluffy?" she asked curiously, her desire to know magnified when Neville's eyes comically widened at Fluffy's mention and his face turned the color of curdled milk.

"Nevermind that now." Harry said, dismissing their questions. "This is about Norbert. Wherever you raised him must have been secure, given what he is. We could take Norbert there, he would be safe. After all, you must already have used the place to raise one mo... err... little pet in need for protection, yes?" Smooth, Harry, very smooth. Now if only he shared the info about this Fluffy with her... Did Hagrid have some other creature as dangerous as a dragon nearby?

"It be a ravine, up them mountains beyon' teh Forbidden Forest." Hagrid said cautiously while feeding Norbert a good diet of dead rats and strong liquor. If his duties as a gamekeeper didn't net him all those interesting -and expensive- ingredients, Valeria would worry about his finances. Strong liquor wasn't cheap and a dragon had a voracious appetite. "But... it's too far, it is! How'd poor Norbert get all teh way there? Forest's dangerous and poor baby... he be so small!"

"We'll help you get him there Hagrid!" Valeria immediately said despite Harry and Neville frantically shaking their heads. "You put him in a strong, safe box and carry him and we'll escort you. Harry here can even use his invisibility cloak to conceal him, keep him safe." she finished, smirking at Harry's gobsmacked expression. Dismiss her questions out of hand, would he? Let's see him get out of being volunteered for this now.

"Oh ye three!" Hagrid exclaimed, very nearly crying as he scooped them all up in his massive embrace and made a credible at squeezing them to death. "Yeh're such good frien's! 'Course I 'ccept yer help!" He dropped them back down when Norbert cried for more food - not nearly soon enough in Valeria's opinion, who'd been crushed between Harry and Neville. The former was still glaring at her and Neville was weasley-red and speechless.

"Hagrid, I don't think..." Harry started but Valeria kicked him in the shin. Robes were so very helpfully concealing, sometimes.

"We're happy to help, Hagrid. What are friends for, right?" she said cheerfully as she dragged the boys towards the hut's exit. They didn't offer much resistance; she blamed it on the shock factor. "Just make sure to be ready by Sunday morning. The earlier, the better; we'll have all day to help and still be back before curfew." She didn't mention that a long trek through the Forbidden Forest was at least as bad rules-wise as breaking curfew was. Unlike most dour adults, Hagrid might be willing to ignore laws - he had to, to raise a dragon - but she hadn't yet tested how far he would go. Better not remind him exactly what they were about to do...

"Are you out of your bloody mind?" Harry said as soon as they were beyond hearing distance from the hut. "Helping Hagrid carry a dragon through the Forbidden Forest? Do you realize how dangerous that is? And volunteering my cloak? How'd you even know about it anyway?!"

"Oh please! Hagrid has half a century's experience with the forest, he treats dangerous creatures like puppies, has the strength of a couple dozen men, is near-immune to poisons, can do nonverbal magic with an umbrella that many wizards can't with a wand and his magic resistance could shrug off the spells of an Auror thanks to his ancestry. Do you really think he needs a bunch of first-years as escorts?"

"Then why... why volunteer us?" Neville asked in a thoughtful voice. He trusted her more than Harry and knew her better, too. Valeria smiled as she saw him trying to work through her reasoning and not cowering timidly at their situation. At least their tutoring sessions had paid off in more than just potions.

"Exactly due to Hagrid's abilities. He'll never see Norbert as a threat because to him, he isn't. Without us suggesting it, he'd never take Norbert elsewhere. Without us escorting him, he might decide to set Norbert free near here instead of a safe location." she explained. "What happens if the ministry finds out? What happens if the dragon kills some careless student?"

"We should speak to Dumbledore..." Harry suggested and Valeria rolled her eyes.

"Never trust a politican, Harry." She'd been researching Albus Dumbledore since their last meeting and some of the things she'd found out were a bit disquieting. "Our headmaster is not just responsible for this school. He is the head of the Wizengamot, the wizards' high court. The same court that made the laws against dragon breeding and that would send Hagrid to Azkaban for it." She didn't mention the headmaster's positions in the International Confederation of Wizards, the Order of Merlin, or his being considered the greatest wizard of modern times - all positions he'd held since World War Two. Didn't that ring any alarm bells to anyone? It wasn't as if the information was a secret - it was common knowledge in the wizarding world. She resolved to discuss it with Daphne and Tracey as soon as they found an opportunity away from Dumbledore's chosen residence.

"He is?" Harry's face was marred by a severe scowl that twisted his lightning-bolt scar into something uglier. "He seemed nice... and very wise. Would he really put Hagrid in Azkaban?"

"No idea." Oh Harry, how could you be so naive. He might not but he would certainly ask for something in return. "But do you want to risk it? If we say something and turn Hagrid in, we can't unsay it."

"No... I guess you're right." Harry and Neville looked at each other, determination slowly showing through their doubts. "But why delay till Sunday? Why not tomorrow? The earlier we get Norbert away, the better... right?"

"You want to venture into the Forbidden Forest unprepared?" she asked rhetorically. "With Hagrid for our escort nothing there should be able to hurt us but better safe than sorry. I plan to take with me everything I can make, buy, or steal that would make the trip safer and so should you."

They parted ways after that, returning to their respective common rooms, their minds on the mission ahead.

 **...**

Late April morning in the woods was more wet than cold, especially in Scotland. Mist limited visibility to no more than twenty feet and every twig, leaf, bough and trunk was coated in a thin film of freezing water. The soil underneath had turned to mud, some patches of which were thick enough to qualify as swampland. The forest itself was at times too thick to walk through, the tangle of undergrowth and exposed tree roots coming up to their chests. Forget about man-eating beasts; a small misstep, a tiny slip, and they'd fall down and snap their neck on a root or crack their skull open on a rock... probably both.

Fortunately, they had two advantages their muggle counterparts didn't. The first one was magic; it had taken Valeria two afternoons - over a dozen hours - of practice to get the _Impervius_ charm to work but it had been worth it. Once she'd cast it on everything, the second-year waterproofing spell repelled mist, water and similar fluids from all their clothes and possessions, except the protective gloves from their potions kits she, Neville and Harry had opted to wear. Being dragonhide the gloves repelled spells, even beneficial ones, but they thought it an acceptable tradeoff for their hands being resistant to fire, corrosives, magic, stings, fangs and claws. There was one downside though; ever since she'd explained the gloves' properties to him, Harry kept sharing his dreams of a full dragonhide suit to laugh off Malfoy's hexing. Nevermind that no such suit would fit his growing self as resizing charms couldn't be applied... or the fact that dragonhide armor was restricted to aurors.

Their second advantage was Hagrid. They'd placed Norbert in a secure crate - thankfully, not wooden - and wrapped Harry's Invisibility Cloak around it. Valeria had then tried to stick the package to Hagrid's back but all her attempts had failed; not only did the cloak repel adhesives but sticking charms simply refused to work on it. Neither would levitation for some reason so they'd resorted to using a rope. The half of it wrapped around Hagrid's torso Valeria had to camouflage using color-changing charms. But after all that, Hagrid had both his hands free and nobody would know he carried anything in his back. Being a nearly-twelve-foot half-giant, he could simply trample through the worst patches of undergrowth for them or push aside even massive obstacles. Even Valeria was impressed when he moved a massive fallen tree trunk from their path and Harry and Neville were positively gaping.

"I'm glad we didn't bring Ron along." Harry whispered as he pointed out a pair of spiders the size of dogs that seemed to be following them along. Valeria wasn't very keen about the overly-large overly-clever insects herself and tried to ignore them... until it occured to her what they really were.

"Whatchya worryin' 'bout?" Hagrid told her happily when she warned him of the Acromantulas. "They be jus' a pair o' Aragog's kids." Apparently unconcerned of the magic-resistant, wizard-eating, class-XXXXX insectoid fiends, he marched on after greeting them! At least they were still babies - she wouldn't want to meet their daddy until after mastering the Killing Curse herself, but Hagrid seemed to already know and have a friendly relationship with him. Why was she not surprised?

Neville on the other hand was entirely unconcerned; he was having a field day with all the magical plants they were encountering in the forest. So when he jumped up and shouted, Harry and her were understandably concerned.

"Hagrid, stop! Don't take another step!" he exclaimed as he moved to the front of their small group. Searching into a leather purse larger and better tailored than her own he produced a trowel and an empty pot, reminding Valeria that the Noble and Ancient House of Longbottom was one of the wealthier in wizarding Britain. He then proceeded to carefully extract a tiny plant Hagrid had been about to step on from the forest floor, pot it and carefully place it into his magical purse. "Dittany!" he explained at everyone else's confused looks. "Rare and hard to grow, its juices or essence can heal many wounds. Professor Sprout will be so happy we found one!"

"Here comes Neville's project for the rest of the year..." Harry whispered as they picked up the pace.

"No bet, Potter." She smiled fondly at Neville's animated conversation with Hagrid about all the strange plants and fungi the gamekeeper had encountered in his fifty years of forays into the Forbidden Forest. "Neville's going to be a great herbologist one day and I wish him all luck in his future career - though I doubt he'll need it." She sighed. "Ever thought what you'll be doing once you graduate?"

"...Are you serious?" Harry said after a brief pause. "We haven't even finished our first year! Bloody hell, the two of us had no idea about the magical world a few months ago!"

"I'd really like to be grand sorceress, one day." Valeria continued, not listening. "Do you think I'd manage it?"

"You are serious! Mental, too!" The scrawny Gryffindor shook his head, sending his wild black hair dancing. "That's headmaster Dumbledore's job."

Well Dumbledore was already over a century old, Valeria thought. And while wizards could live for very long times - headmaster Dippet had been three hundred and eighteen years old when he died - they mostly retired by the middle of their second century. But that wasn't the problem. The fact that not a single witch had been grand sorceress for the past six hundred years was. What was more, the vast majority of important positions in wizarding Britain had been held by wizards over the last few centuries and many critical laws favored wizards over witches. A three or four to one majority of wizards over witches in such positions was almost as bad as the muggleborn versus pureblood issues and yet it was not even mentioned as a problem. Of course, Valeria would have problems with both prej...

Something hard collided with her Shield Charm from behind at about the level of her head. Before she could even turn around or renew the spell two more collisions followed, the shield collapsed and she fell to the ground from the backlash. The facefull of mud was wet and icky and awful and, far worse, it momentarily blinded her.

"Valeria!" a boy shouted and grabbed her hand, frantically pulling her through the muddy undergrowth. The next hit fell on her back instead of her head and she was very grateful to Harry or Neville for the help. It felt like being hit with a golf club, something she'd unfortunately experienced once before in her old muggle school. Rolling to avoid any further attacks, she tried to clear the mud from her eyes and bring her wand to bear at the same time while the sounds of a brief scufle came from overhead.

 _"Everte Statum! Furnunculus! Protego! Tarantalegra!"_

She had no idea who was casting what but could only hear Neville and Harry's voices amid the cracks of twigs and fallen leaves, the splashes of many feet trying to run through mud and something very large and very angry roaring further ahead. Opening her eyes after a muttered scouring charm thrown at her own head, she came face to face with a wrinkly grey humanoid no more than four feet tall. Its twisted hands were seriously clawed, its face was goblin-like but even more vicious, its eyes glowed red and it carried a femur bone as an improvised club. The image was accompanied by the smell of rotting meat and the tang of drying blood from the dark brown blotches all over the thing's head and upper torso.

 _"INCENDIO!"_

Valeria didn't scream; she had not screamed since before her eight birthday. No sir, that was a deliberate, carefully controlled, not at all panicked incantation that resulted in a torrent of white-hot flames slamming into the horrible thing's torso. The nasty little bugger screamed just fine for all of five seconds and then its blackened, still-twitching corpse collapsed on the forest floor. Valeria gave it a swift kick for good measure then turned to see how the others were doing.

Harry was squearing off against three of the nasty goblinoids at once, dodging their rapid blows and occasionally blocking one with his own Shielding Charm while returning fire with a variety of quick jinxes. Valeria wasn't sure if he could keep it up but Neville had worse problems. The timid Gryffindor had been cornered by two of the little monsters against a boulder and all he could do was keep casting the Shield Charm while they beat at him with their grisly clubs - a bloody, nail-studded wooden plank and a severed hand that, thankfully, didn't belong to a human. Gritting her teeth, Valeria threw another torrent of fire at the two of them; they screamed and ran before she could deal with them as she had with their friend.

Satisfied with her performance so far she turned to help Harry when someone jumped on her back and wrapped their filthy, twisted hands around her throat. She tried to pull the thing trying to strangle her off but despite its small size it was surprisingly strong. She tried to bring her wand to bear, maybe use the single nonverbal spell she knew when a second attacker bowled both her and her "passenger" over, then started beating every part of her body it could reach with its club. Why didn't she renew her Shield Charm she wondered as she saw Harry falling over from the corner of her eye. They were about to die in the Forbidden Forest and it was her fault...

WHAM!

Something massive slammed into the golbinoid trying to beat her to death with tremendous force, sending it into a bone-crashing collision with a tree thirty yards away. Almost at the same time a crunching sound came from over her head and something red, hot and foul-smelling splashed on her face. The hands squeezing her throat lay lifeless as a huge shadow leaned over her and Valeria was certain her second attacker had just suffered a terminal case of being stomped. They'd totally forgotten Hagrid. The half-giant crossed all the way to where Harry was surrounded with a single step and smashed three goblinoid creeps aside as if they were pillows. The three didn't get up; every other goblin-thing in the vicinity ran back into the woods at a mad dash.

"Redcaps. Bloody vermin they are." Valeria wouldn't exactly classify the rejects from 1978's Lord of the Rings animation like that but it would do. "Yeh three be OK?"

Her throat didn't hurt much, the Redcap thingy only had its dirty little hands on her for seconds, but her torso and limbs had taken several blows. Nothing seemed broken but she'd have some impressive bruises come evening. Neville looked scared but intact and Harry had a small cut on his arm but was otherwise OK. Looking at Hagrid though, she didn't have the heart to tell him she'd been hurt. The half-giant was covered in scrapes, dirt and many cuts on his coat, evidence of a fight with many more attackers than they had but behind his bushy beard his face showed worry only for them.

"We're OK Hagrid." She said, slowly coming to her feet and trying not to favor her right hand who'd taken the worst of it. The Bone-Breaking Curse of a month ago had hurt a lot worse but for the first time it struck Valeria how much more dangerous the Forbidden Forest was than the castle. These redcap things would have killed them, if not for Hagrid's intervention. And the acromantulas back there might have been small but she bet there were a lot more than just two. The rumors of werewolves and worse beasts were beginning to sound plausible too, and Neville had pointed out to her more than one poisonous plant.

She fervently hoped they'd finish this excursion with no further accidents.

 **...**

Night was rapidly approaching and the Forbidden Forest had taken an aura of dark mysteries and hidden fear as the mist thickened near the ground and silence fell among the ancient trees. They were nearing Hagrid's hut at last, having delayed several hours due to a detour. The gentle giant had realized what dangers the deep forest held for the trio of first-years and had taken them in a circuitous route through the safest areas of the woods. Since the incident with the Redcaps they had not met a single monster, if one did not count Norbert of course.

Fluffy's old home had turned out to be a huge cavern in a ravine higher up the mountains. No more than ten miles from Hogwarts, they'd reached it before midday despite being limited to a child's pace; Valeria was certain Hagrid could get to it from the castle in under an hour. The cavern's mouth was blocked by the simply built but massive door Hagrid had made during Fluffy's tenure. Behind it the opening into the rock rapidly widened to twice as tall as Hagrid was and many times as wide, extending farther than they could see into the gloom. Huge piles of old bones, primarily from cows if the skulls were any evidence, lay discarded in several places, marks of being gnawed upon by something much larger than a cow evident on them. The heavy musty smell of something furry and warm-blooded reminded Valeria of a puppy Claude had once had when the two of them were younger but not even an army of puppies would have produced a stench so strong that lingered for so long; the cave had clearly been abandoned for months.

"OK Potter, spill!" she'd demanded. "What the bloody hell is 'Fluffy'?" While Hagrid showed Norbert his new home, Neville and Harry had shared with her their encounters with the Cerberus now living in the forbidden corridor in the third floor. After the day they'd had Valeria had hardly been surprised by Hagrid's preferred nomenclature and focused instead on what the two boys chose not to share; what the two of them had been doing exploring the forbidden corridor, whether that was connected to Harry's nighttime forays into the Restricted section of the library, or their suspicions on what the Cerberus had to be guarding - for why else would Dumbledore bring a creature just as dangerous as a dragon into the school? Her second thought that the headmaster might want to weed out the overly curious from the student population was less likely but, unfortunately, not entirely out of the question. But now they were almost back at the castle, the monster-infested forest behind them, and a bruised and battered Valeria dreamed of her comfortable bed in the Slytherin dormitories rather than monster-related mysteries and wizarding eeccentricities.

"Hagrid, what's that?" Harry said, pointing out a silvery gleam a few feet from the path. It was some sort of metallic liquid shining under the moonlight, a few drops and a silvery puddle no wider across than her palm.

"Oi! Yer three get behind me!" Hagrid uncharacteristically hissed as he got to the puddle with only two steps. "It's unicorn blood!" he exclaimed after giving it only a glance. "Must find it, it be gra'ely injured!" He bounded off the path and the three of them followed. What choice did they have? Even so close to the castle, the forest gave them the creeps. Soon enough they found more gleaming unicorn blood and Hagrid became more and more worried. Turns out he liked unicorns too, even though they lacked even a simple poisonous sting, let alone something more dangerous.

"We split up!" he told them after fifteen minutes of fruitless searching. "Ye three search 'own tha paths and clearin's an' I'm gonna look inter the woods proper. Ye find anything, ye send green sparks. Ye come inter danger, ye send red sparks and run fer it!"

To say that she and Neville really didn't like that plan would be putting it lightly. Sure, the paths and clearings so close to Hogwarts shouldn't be dangerous like the deep woods was but they'd had enough of the Fobidden Forest for that year. Harry on the other hand had that determined expression of his on his face, wand firmly held at hand and was ready to help. Maybe he liked unicorns too? Valeria hadn't pegged him for a pure, virtuous maiden but appearances could be deceiving.

They walked for nearly half an hour, deeper and deeper into the forest, until the path became almost impossible to follow because the trees were so thick. Harry thought the blood seemed to be getting thicker. There were splashes on the roots of a tree, as though the poor creature had been thrashing around in pain close by. Harry could see a clearing ahead, through the tangled branches of an ancient oak.

"Look —" he murmured, holding out his arm to stop Neville. A bright shape was glittering on the dead and drying leaves. They inched closer. It was a unicorn, and it had quite obviously perished, a wound gaping at its side. Valeria had never seen anything so entrancing and horrible at the same time. Its long, slender legs were stuck out at odd angles where it had fallen and its mane was spread pearly-white on the dark leaves. Harry had taken one step toward it when a slithering sound made him freeze where he stood. A bush on the edge of the clearing quivered.…Then, out of the shadows, a figure came crawling across the ground like some serpent made of mist and darkness. Its black cloak and hood made it almost indistinguishable from the surrounding gloom and Valeria could have sworn it had been little more than a barely visible haze in the night air before it faded into visibility. Harry, Valeria, and Veville stood transfixed. The slithering figure crawled to the unicorn's corpse, lowered its hood over the wound in the animal's side, and a slurping, gurgling sound filled the dead silence, like some misshapen infant gulping down its milk.

Neville fainted dead away, ruining Valeria's plans for a very quiet, very hasty retreat. The figure heard Neville's fall, of course, and glided slowly to an upright position, silvery blood dripping down its front like the Bloody Baron, Slytherin's own House ghost. She immediately sent the red sparks to the sky then stood to Harry's side, both of them resolutely holding their wands in a fighting position as they stood between the figure and Neville. They could hold out until Hagrid arrived, couldn't they?

Harry screamed and fell to his knees, his wand dropping from nerveless fingers, as the nightmarish figure simply stared at him. What the bloody hell? Her own wand shaking in her hand, Valeria sent a torrent of fire as hot and deadly as the one she'd used against the Redcaps. Fire had always been her forte, even before taking up a wand, and with two of her friends in mortal peril, not to mention herself, she had no problems whatsoever with reducing that vampirelike creep to a pile of smoking ashes. Unfortunately, said creep had other ideas. With only a small gesture the fire parted around him and he glided ahead, as if pressing against a moderately strong wind. She stumbled backwards in both surprise and fear and nearly toppled over Neville's prone form. There was only one thing left to do other than running... and she wasn't sure she could run and abandon the two boys to near-certain death.

So she reached into her purse with her still-hurting right hand, grabbed the cauldron and hurled about a gallon of her corrossive, boil-inducing potion straight at the approaching threat. Unfortunately her aim fell short, the potion drenching the figure's outstretched hand rather than its face. Intentionally misbrewed potion sizzled, melted through the figure's robes and splashed on its bare arm revealed underneath. Immediately boils begun growing on it by the dozen, bursting in slimy gouts of pus then growing once more. Two voices, one high-pitched but fairly normal and one hissing in tones both deeper and higher than human, shouted out in both anger and pain.

BANG!

Valeria found herself leaning against a tree trunk thirty feet away from her previous position with no memory of crossing the intervening space. The back of her head, her shoulders, her lower back and her backside hurt abominably and her chest and abdomen joined them after a momentary shock. She felt as if she'd been kicked by a giant. A full-sized one, not a half-blood like Hagrid; she was lucky to even be alive. The hooded figure stood back in the clearing, staring at its revealed hand now twisted and boil-covered beyond recognition. As Valeria watched though, she noticed that new boils had already stopped growing. In fact, the existing ones were getting smaller, eventually vanishing away to leave a normal human hand, almost unnaturally pale but unblemished. Either unicorn blood had some restorative properties or their attacker had the regenerative abilities of a vampire. They were sooo doomed.

TWANG!

A crossbow bolt as thick as her thumb and as long as her legs came out of the forest and struck the figure in the shoulder. Going all the way through and barely slowing down, it continued on its path until it struck one of the trees across the clearing, cracking the trunk as it dug into it to its tail feathers. Hagrid came out of the woods, huge crossbow in hand and a second bolt already loaded. The ominous figure, is mangled and bloody shoulder already healing, turned tail and run, the half-giant after it so fast in its leaping steps that Valeria could have sworn they were both blurs.

After all that had happened that day, she thought about collapsing on the spot. Harry and Neville might still be at risk though and so would she if she fell unconscious in the Forbidden Forest with Hagrid away hunting that creep. So she dragged herself back to the clearing, half-stumbling over roots and stones, until she reached the others. Neville was still out of it, but still unharmed. Of all of them he'd been the luckiest all day long. Harry was more of an issue. Valeria had no idea what their attacker had done to him but he was curled up in a fetal position, both hands holding his head even as his scar was an angry red and even bled a bit from one end. What kind of magic had their attacker used on him?

Valeria's eyes were drawn back to the dead unicorn. The bright white corpse still gleamed in the moonlight as its silvery blood slowly oozed out of its wound. Hmm, unicorn blood. She'd never read about its uses, only of the magic-focusing properties of unicorn hair and the many restorative and curative properties of unicorn horn. But their attacker had been drinking it... and had regenerated before her eyes. She took a couple empty potion bottes out of her purse and started levitating the dead unicorn's blood into them. Harry would welcome a relief from whatever curse the ominous figure had thrown at him and she wouldn't say no herself to getting rid of all the bruises accumulated during this ill-conceived adventure.

Her work however was interrupted by the sound of hooves rapidly approaching from the forest. Returning the two filled bottles to her magical purse for safekeeping during any upcoming scuffle, she raised her wand and put as much determination and as little pain as she could into her voice?

"Who goes there? Reveal yourself!"

A half-man, half-horse galloped into the clearing. He was a young man from the waist up, with white-blond hair, muscular arms and torso and a beautiful face, but a palomino stallion from the waist down. Even before knowing of the wizarding world Valeria could name his kind, if only from a book on Greek mythology she'd read; he was a centaur.

"I mean you no harm" he said earnestly. "I am..." they were interrupted by Harry's groan as he shakily rose to his knees next to Valeria but couldn't get upright yet. Without being asked, the centaur trotted up to him and gave him a hand.

"Are you all right?" said the centaur, pulling Harry to his feet.

"Yes — thank you — what was that?" The centaur didn't answer. He had astonishingly blue eyes, like pale sapphires. He looked carefully at Harry, his eyes lingering on the scar that stood out, livid, on Harry's forehead.

"You are the Potter boy," he said. "You had better get back to Hagrid. The forest is not safe at this time — especially for you. "My name is Firenze," he added.

"Hagrid is chasing the hooded, black-cloaked figure that attacked us." Valeria provided. Seeing as the centaur was no threat at the moment, she went to Neville and tried to revive him with a couple light slaps. She'd just succeeded when there was suddenly a sound of more galloping from the other side of the clearing. Two more centaurs came bursting through the trees, their flanks heaving and sweaty. One of them was a redhead with a chestnut horse body, quite a bit older than Firenze and more regal-looking, with a long, flowing beard. The other looked wild, his black hair tangled like Hagrid's, older than Firenze but younger than the regal redhead.

"Firenze!" the black-haired one thundered. "What are you doing? Consorting with humans! Have you no shame?"

"Do you realize who this is, Bane?" said Firenze. "This is the Potter boy. The quicker he leaves this forest, the better."

"What have you been telling him?" growled Bane. "Remember, Firenze, we are sworn not to set ourselves against the heavens. Have we not read what is to come in the movements of the planets?" Valeria had read that centaurs were fair healers and unparalleled archers with their magically grown bows but their greatest magic was in divination. Pyromancy, oneiromancy, ornithomancy, they practiced all kinds, but they'd mastered the reading of the stars. And now she had confirmation of that part, from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Hmm, better not phrase it like that - this Bane guy looked angry enough.

The noble-looking redhead pawed the ground nervously. "I'm sure Firenze thought he was acting for the best, " he said in his gloomy voice. Bane kicked his back legs in anger. "For the best! What is that to do with us? Centaurs are concerned with what has been foretold! It is not our business to run around like donkeys after stray humans in our forest!" Firenze suddenly reared on to his hind legs in anger, almost toppling Harry in the process.

"Do you not see that unicorn?" Firenze bellowed at Bane. "Do you not understand why it was killed? Or have the planets not let you in on that secret? I set myself against what is lurking in this forest, Bane, yes, with humans alongside me if I must." At that, the angry Bane whisked around and plunged off into the trees, leaving all of them behind.

"Take care Firenze." the redhead centaur warned solemnly. "Always the innocent are the first victims," he intoned. "So it has been for ages past, so it is now. You may no longer be among them but that does not mean you are in any less risk."

"Aren't we all?" Firenze asked but nodded. "Thank you for the warning Ronan. I'll guard the three of them until Hagrid returns. Farewell for now." The older centaur -Ronan- followed his angry companion into the woods.

Valeria didn't have a clue what was going on. She was too exhausted, battered, bruised, surprised and frightened to bandy cryptic remarks with inhuman prophets though.

"Why's Bane so angry?" Harry asked. "What was that thing Hagrid saved us from, anyway?" Apparently, Gryffindors were less susceptible to the downsides of adventuring and bolder with their curiosity. Must come with all the red they wrapped themselves with.

Firenze stared up at the stars, seeing in them something beyond their understanding, but did not answer Harry's question. They helped Neville and dressed their wounds in silence for so long that Valeria thought Firenze didn't want to talk to them anymore. She was wondering whether she should take out the unicorn blood and use it, however, when Firenze suddenly stopped.

"Harry Potter, do you know what unicorn blood is used for?" Aha. Not even centaurs were immune to the Boy-Who-Lived legend. Valeria was content to listen avidly while Firenze answered Harry's questions if it meant she'd learn something new, even though it meant being relegated to the role of bystander.

"No," said Harry, startled by the question even though it was central to why the unicorn they'd been searching for had been killed "We've only used the horn and tail hair in Potions."

"That is because it is a monstrous thing, to slay a unicorn," said Firenze. "Only one who has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, would commit such a crime. The blood of a unicorn will keep you alive, even if you are an inch from death, but at a terrible price. You have slain something pure and defenseless to save yourself, and you will have but a half-life, a cursed life, from the moment the blood touches your lips." Oh Merlin! No using it for pain relief then. Had Firenze arrived any later, Valeria would have cursed both herself and her friends in her ignorance!

Harry stared at the back of Firenze's head, which was dappled silver in the moonlight. "But who'd be that desperate?" he wondered aloud. "If you're going to be cursed forever, death's better, isn't it?"

"It is," Firenze agreed, "unless all you need is to stay alive long enough to drink something else — something that will bring you back to full strength and power — something that will mean you can never die. Mr. Potter, do you know what is hidden in the school at this very moment?"

"The Philosopher's Stone! Of course — the Elixir of Life!" Wait, what?! The pinnacle of alchemical achievement, the provider of unlimited mundane wealth and lifespan, was in Hogwarts? And Harry knew that! What the bloody hell! Was that what he'd been researching in the restricted section at nights? Valeria caught Neville's nervous expression from the corner of her eye and realized the other boy had known. He had known and not told her... good. Despite some pangs of anger at being excluded, not being trusted, she was relieved the two of them were being careful with such knowledge. They'd only known her for a few months - had she been in their place, she'd kept it to herself too.

"...many years to return to power, who has clung to life, awaiting their chance?" Firenze and Harry were continuing their little discussion and Valeria could only make guesses at what they meant. She didn't have enough information. Perhaps...

Harry paled. Worse than when they'd faced danger in the forest. Worse than when they were about to face that ominous figure. Worse than she'd ever seen him, and the boy didn't scare easily. "Do you mean," Harry croaked, "that was Voldemort?"

Ominous silence fell at that proclamation, Valeria's train of thought breaking apart as if a giant's hand had smashed it to pieces. Next to her, Neville was trembling now and Harry was only a little better. They stood tranfixed in that clearing, Firenze the centaur staring at them sadly with his bright blue eyes.

"Harry! Harry, are yeh all rig't?" Hagrid was running toward them down the path, his massive crossbow bouncing off one shoulder.

"I'm fine," said Harry, obviously not knowing what he was saying. "The unicorn's dead, Hagrid, it's in that clearing back there."

"This is where I leave you," Firenze murmured as Hagrid hurried off to examine the unicorn. "You are safe now."

Valeria didn't think so. Not if the worst dark wizard of the past century was about to make a comeback. Not with him and his followers about to terrorize wizarding Britain once again and with her in their preferred victim type.

"Good luck, Harry Potter," said Firenze. "The planets have been read wrongly before now, even by centaurs. I hope this is one of those times." He turned and cantered back into the depths of the forest, leaving all of them shivering behind him.

Valeria decided on at least one thing. As soon as the three of them were back in the castle, Harry Potter and company would share all they knew about this turn of events whether they liked it or not.

 **...**


	17. Best-laid plans

**Apologies everyone. Due to a posting accident, the final draft got posted earlier today instead of the finished chapter. In addition to more than a few errors, it lacked author notes and the disclaimer. It is fixed now so (hopefully) no harm, no foul.**

 **Of the original maze run in the Philosopher's Stone, Harry and Hermione trusting Snape to give a real, solvable riddle always bugged me. Especially since they suspected Snape of being the thief himself. I blame it on Hermione's blind trust to authority mostly. Valeria OTOH is not a trusting person... which often causes more problems than it solves.**

 **In case you were wondering, the incident with Mt. Vesuvius is canon. No, really; it's straight from Pottermore. Then again, since Potterverse magic can repeatedly bend time and, if used inventively, lay waste to entire cities or erase large bodies of water why be worried by one little volcanic eruption? More on that once the second war gets into gear BTW.**

 **ro781727: thanks for all the help with the errors and your PMs.**

 **everyone: reviews feed my will to write. I think it's spelled E-G-O or something. But if you have anything to ask, PMs are good too.**

 **Disclaimer: I am not J. and thus don't own Harry Potter. Evidence provided by my math scores and empty bank account.**

 **...**

"That doesn't even make sense, Potter!" Daphne sneered at the Gryffindor boy. "Professor Snape wanting you dead and you're still alive? Don't insult my intelligence!"

"I saw him jinxing the broom." Weasley interjected, his face going tomato red in fury. "Your precious Potions Master was at the stands during the reserve tryouts Wood held after we lost the match with your House! And he was staring at Harry and muttering under his breath - I know a jinx when I see one, Greengrass!"

"Oh yes, the Head of the House of cunning attempts to assassinate the Boy-Who-Lived in plain sight of half of Gryffindor. What's more, he casts the jinx wandlessly which few wizards can manage, but not silently which a sixth year student could do and would deflect any suspicions." Daphne snorted, tossed her silvery hair in annoyance and turned back to Harry. "If the potions master wanted to kill you Potter, he'd use a slow poison on you and forgetfulness potion on both of you; you'd go to sleep and never wake up with nobody ever finding out the culprit." The blonde Slytherin witch smiled nastily at the three pale Gryffindor boys. "Still believe professor Snape wants you dead?"

Valeria sighed. Their little brainstorming get-together was not going well. She'd planned it on the premise that six brains are better than three and had not exactly given Harry or Neville an opportunity to refuse, sharing all she knew with Daphne and Tracey as soon as they were back at the castle. The boys couldn't complain about it since they'd told Weasley of all people. So they'd all grudgingly met at an abandoned classroom to go over all they knew and come up with a decision.

Naturally, the problems started as soon as Ron Weasley and Daphne Greengrass met. The two purebloods clashed in personality, beliefs, and even looks so badly they couldn't be in the same room for five minutes without going for each other's throats. Shouts of "blood-traitor" and "death-eater-spawn" had become a frequent occurrence over the past two hours, no matter how untrue, and they were beginning to get on everybody's nerves.

 _"Furnunculus!"_

 _"Protego!"_

Valeria would feel sorry for Ron if he hadn't fallen victim to his own reflected curse. Or if he hadn't attacked her best friend. Or if he were a bit less annoying a character. Or... Who was she kidding? She didn't feel sorry for him at all. But maybe she would for Harry if a really enraged Daphne assaulted him for supporting his friend. The prim and proper pureblood witch could be downright vicious if offended and her wandwork was in top form after so many hours of dueling practice.

"I... I don't think this is working..." a quiet and a bit unsure voice said from beside her.

"I know Neville. Maybe if the three of you had trusted us earlier." The boy begun to wilt from embarassment but that didn't stop her from driving the point home. "We could have helped, you know - like I helped you with potions. I'm a better researcher than you three and I'd bet Daphne and Tracey know a lot about old magic and old families." She shook her head as Neville shrank back from her. "Thank Merlin you're from an ancient family too and Harry trusted you at least. He and Ron would never had found out what the Philosopher's Stone is supposed to be otherwise."

"Come on you two, you're missing on all the fun!" Tracey waved cheerfully and pointed at the other side of the room. "Daphne just hit Potter with the Tongue-Tying Curse, it's hilarious!"

"You're right, Neville." Valeria finally admitted ten minutes later when Daphne, Harry and Weasley had marched out of the abandoned classroom too angry to speak, Tracey trailing them and making suggestions on what curses they should try next. "All of us working together was never going to work."

"I'm sorry..." the timid Gryffindor mumbled but she immediately interrupted him.

"Don't be. The Philosopher's Stone is too important for that - we need to prepare."

"S-still don't want to involve teachers?" he asked, unsure what she meant. Valeria had to think carefully before replying but in the end there was only one answer.

"No. Harry suspects professor Snape but he's far too trusting; a single culprit and such an obvious one? Probably a set-up to deflect blame." She scowled, considering how for being the "best magical school" Hogwarts had too many unreliable faculty members. "We talk to the wrong professor and we'll be seeing if Daphne is right about slow poisons."

The two of them sat in silence for a good five minutes before Valeria spoke up again.

"Daphne, Tracey, and I will be keeping an eye on professor Snape. Since you three Lions will probably keep stumbling into trouble the way you run around under that invisibility cloak, you call for help if anything happens, OK?" Valeria smiled at Neville's chagrined expression as the Gryffindor boy did not refute her accusation. "You can easily find us; the three of us will probably be studying in this classroom most of the time."

"Studying about wh... the exams!" Neville jumped up and grabbed his bag, ready to run off to the library then and there. She couldn't help it; she laughed.

"Seriously Neville, you'd forgotten?" She packed her own things and followed him out. "The last few weeks have been kind of hectic, yes, but how could you miss all the revision and extra homework?"

They ran back to their respective common rooms, both worrying about far too many things that could go wrong.

 **...**

The Charms exam was the easiest. The theoretical portion was only about the incantations and wand motions for the spells they'd learned throughout the year. That it didn't include any of the more advanced material on basic enchantment or theory of magic was kind of a disappointment but the practical potion more than made up for it. Professor Flitwick tested them on _"Tarantallegra"_ , the Dancing Feet charm. The simplest of animation charms, it was quite complicated for first-years but also a very useful bit of magic. Not only could it make objects like chairs or tables dance at the caster's control but it could also be used on people during dueling, or even things that didn't have legs to begin with. Zaccaria Innocenti, an ancient Roman warlock, had used it in 79 AD on Mt. Vesuvius. Turns out conjuring a dance is not a good idea when your target is a volcano, as the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum could attest. Professor Flitwick provided a smaller, safer target instead; they only had to make a pineapple dance.

Potions was only complicated by Professor Snape's aggressive attitude. Valeria had brewed the Forgetfulness Draught perfectly several times before, though not all of them in the potions classroom. She finished the exam tied for second place with Parvati Patil from Gryffindor, who gave her a smug, victorious smirk as she did so. Fay Dunbar, also from Gryffindor, and Draco Malfoy tied for third place. Surprisingly, Neville didn't do too badly and Harry and Weasley matched his performance.

Professor McGonagal had them attempt the minor animate to inanimate transfiguration, using mice as base and snuffboxes as their target. She marked them on the thoroughness of the change, complexity of the end result, and time taken. Padma Patil from Ravenclaw managed to match Valeria in all three and gave her an exact replica of her twin's expression.

In the Herbology theoretical exam Valeria finished second after Neville thanks to her long hours of practice during her detention with Hagrid, though her better grasp of magic allowed her to match him in the practical section. Re-potting plants became extremely easy once the soil had been magically softened and a bit of Coldfire helped keep in control the more aggressive specimens. She wondered how everyone else did but didn't have time to dwell on it as there were a few extracurricular activities she, Daphne, and Tracey had to prepare for.

Defense against the Dark Arts was really easy compared to either the dueling practice or their recent adventures. They only had to cast counters to simple jinxes in a controlled environment, with the harder spell they were tested on being the counter to the Full-Body-Bind. For her, Daphne and Harry who had all managed a good Shield Charm under combat conditions the practical was a joke. Tracey, Weasley, and even Neville did quite well too, if not as much as the first three.

Astronomy was fun, despite being so late at night. History of Magic on the other hand bored them to death. They'd heard Binns repeat his lectures on the various goblin rebellions so many times that they'd either been carved into their brains or they'd developed a subconscious aversion to learning more History as a defense mechanism. Luckily, Valeria was in the one-third of the class that did the former.

"Finally!" exclaimed Tracey later that evening as they'd gathered in their usual spot for some quiet, relaxation, and illegal spellcasting. "No more exams! No more teachers looking over our shoulders pushing us to read more books or write more stupid homework. They almost had me believe writing and magic had anything in common!"

"They do..." Valeria said absentmindedly as she pushed another spell into the thin metal rod she was trying to enchant. "Wand movements resemble letters and once we learn silent casting we can... ah, finally!" she tapped the metal rod, tying the enchantment to a contact trigger.

"What are you making?" Daphne asked curiously as she went through the last few steps of the corrosive potion recipe Valeria had shared with them. The taller blonde had been quietly excited at a nonlethal but very painful and hard-to-cure solution even first-years could brew and had decided to take some to her family. Valeria hoped when it was tested on the Greengrass family's enemies nobody followed the recipe's trail back to her.

"Just a simple unlocker. Should prove useful."

"Why?" Tracey asked. "There are kid's toys that do the same and everyone learns ' _Alohomora'_ in their first year."

"True, but..." she didn't get to finish her thought when the classroom door banged open and a disheveled, black-eyed Neville charged inside.

"You gotta h-help!" he huffed, almost collapsing before them as he tried to catch his breath. "I tried to stop them, I really did! They didn't listen though."

"Calm down Neville." Valeria said as she started packing. She suspected she knew what this was about, though why Neville would have such an impressive black eye she knew not. "Deep breaths - we won't be helping you if you pass out now, will we? Just tell us when you're ready."

"D-Dumbledore!" he huffed again urgently. "He went to the ministry!"

"Of course he did." Tracey said. "Isn't he Chief Warlock?"

"You d-don't understand! H-Hagrid told the secret." He jumped up, obviously in too much of a hurry to rest. "He knows! he knows how to get past Fluffy!"

"Who?"

"Professor Snape!"

"Not this again!" Daphne growled. "You Gryffindors are so thickheaded that..."

"Harry and Ron went after the Stone!" Neville finally exclaimed and ran. Valeria, Tracey, and Daphne ran after him.

 **...**

By the time the four of them reached the third floor, the door to the forbidden corridor was already open. Beyond it stood a three-headed monster as tall as the ceiling, each one of its gigantic heads large enough to swallow them whole and a main body that rivaled a wooly mammoth in both magnitude and shagginess. It was a Cerberus of course, the three-headed dog from Greek Mythology that guarded the gates to the Underworld. Luckily this one spared no attention to them, all three heads staring at the open trapdoor in the middle of the corridor. The trapdoor was too small for the dog to pass through but that didn't mean it wasn't trying.

Next to the door, a large harp stood abandoned as well as the broken pieces of some smaller wooden instrument the Cerberus must have stepped on. Neville had shared Fluffy's secret with them of course but Valeria doubted they could reach the harp before the dog turned them into its new favorite chew toy. Magic was out of the question; Cerberi were as dangerous as dragons when it came to magic resistance and disabling all three of its heads before it killed them was not going to happen. On the other hand, they hadn't brought anything to make music with and Harry and Weasley had already foolhardily charged ahead. So with a prayer to whatever Old Gods wizards believed in, Valeria whispered an incantation at the harp.

 _"Tarantallegra"_

The harp's strings didn't have feet of course. Then again, neither had the pineapple; a pretty horrible music issued forth from the harp as it tried to "dance." The Cerberus jumped, all six of its dinner-plate-sized eyes turning towards their direction, but to their great relief it had very poor taste in music. Its eyelids begun to droop almost immediately and within a few seconds it was fast asleep.

"We're lucky it didn't collapse on the trapdoor, this beast must weigh a ton!" Tracey commented.

"Several tons, actually." Valeria corrected, if only to avoid thinking about how close to them the humongous maws now were. "A ton is only about as much as a bull and 'Fluffy' here is much larger."

"Look at that!" Daphne whispered, pointing at a lump on the floor that looked like a bed sheet made up of liquid silver. "Is that Potter's invisibility cloak?" She gathered it up, muttering about foolish boys and expensive magical artifacts left behind.

"Guys, listen!" Neville said and pointed at the trapdoor. "I think I can hear screaming!"

Tracey slapped him at the back of his head. "We're not guys!" she protested emphatically.

"Sorry, force of habit." Neville said timidly but then jumped. "I can definitely hear screams though!"

"Me too." Daphne said with a scowl. The four of them stared at each other for a moment, undecided, but then the spell on the harp failed and Fluffy immediately woke.

"Jump jump, jump!" Valeria shouted and followed her own advice, pushing the others ahead of her. Behind them, Fluffy the Cerberus begun to bark and tried to go through the trapdoor once more.

 **...**

"Ow." Valeria groaned trying to sit up and failing. "Who landed on me?"

"Sorry." Daphne muttered then helped her up. "At least it wasn't a fatal drop."

"HEEELP!"

The muffled but still loud cry came from a bloated green cocoon of twisting and struggling vines, one of two in the area they'd landed on. The same vines covered the entire floor and they'd already begun climbing up her and Daphne's legs. Trying to dislodge them only got the taller blonde's hands trapped in the green mess as well.

"It's Devil's Snare!" Neville said from his place in Tracey's embrace. The two of them had landed on each other as well and the highly aggressive plant had already tied them together. The Slytherin brunette was no help, unable to reach her wand and too busy having a nervous laughter attack to be of any use. "It grows in the dark, always seeking to trap and strangle its prey. The only thing it fears is fire!"

Valeria smirked nastily; fire was her element. A sphere of red and white flames formed in her right hand even as her thick cherry wand shot a longer torrent of smaller but more numerous tongues of fire. The Devil's Snare quickly retreated from the four of them but seemed more reluctant to abandon whatever was in the two cocoons it had made. So Valeria had to persuade it with further incineration. The two cocoons opened up at once, spewing out a battered and bruised Harry Potter and one Ronald Weasley in even worse shape - the redhead was actually unconscious.

"Thanks!" the Boy-Who-Lived said between gasping breaths. "Thought we were done for before you arriv..."

SLAP!

Leaving a red hand print on the stupid Gryffindor's right cheek was thoroughly satisfying. His gobsmacked expression was priceless, too. "Harry James Potter! How dare you ignore Neville's suggestion to contact us! You think you're the only one who'll suffer if the Dark Lord returns to full power, do you?" She ignored Harry's surprise, Neville's uncertainty and Tracey's glee at her outburst and advanced on the idiotic, brain-dead, utterly stupid boy with the intellectual capacity of a lobotomized lemming. "How dare you try to lock him up when he attempts to contact us himself? Are you daft? Two first-years against the defenses the Hogwarts faculty could come up with? Thank Morgana you're rubbish at the Full-Body-Bind or that Devil's Snare would be squeezing you to death and slowly digesting your oozing fluids by now!" And then he slapped him again, if not nearly so hard.

"It's O-OK Val, I don't mind." Neville tried to interject.

"Of course you don't, you're a good friend and Gryffindor!" she said, having none of it. "I on the other hand..."

"Don't we have more important things to worry about?" Daphne asked dryly, interrupting their little drama. Valeria sighed, nodded, and pulled an exhausted Harry to his feet once more.

"What do we do with Weasley?" Tracey asked, prodding the unconscious redhead with her foot. "He doesn't look dead."

"We carry him with us. Can't leave him here with the Devil's Snare or send him back to Fluffy." Valeria shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe he'll wake up and prove useful." If only as cannon fodder.

The six of them gathered their courage and desperation and marched deeper into the gauntlet of deadly traps.

 **...**

"Knight to E7!"

Weasley had woken up just in time to prove himself useful. Neville and Harry barely knew the basics of chess and Tracey had never played. Daphne and Valeria were both fairly good but both Harry and Daphne swore Weasley was a master. When had Daphne played against the Gryffindor boy? Valeria wondered. Not to mention why; the two of them could barely stand each other!

"Pawn to E7!"

Valeria would readily admit the redhead was a superior player. They'd just lost a Knight to an enemy Bishop but Weasley forced it into an exchange, taking the Bishop with a Pawn while uncovering another piece and luring the enemy queen into tight quarters where mobility and reach were more limited. They had two serious problems though. The first was that Weasley had been wounded by Devil's Snare and someone in pain didn't play as well as someone freshly rested. He'd already made a couple of mistakes the rest of them had only noticed after the fact but a player of his ability should have seen in advance if his elaborate tactics in the rest of the game were any indication. And the second problem was, of course, that they were too many. With six people on the board having taken up the places of several black pieces, they couldn't afford to take losses. And having to protect pieces other than the King as a victory condition was a bad position to be in.

"Damn!"

"What is it?" Harry asked Weasley nervously from his position as King, a position both Neville and Valeria had insisted on.

"You're finally admitting it Weasley?" Daphne commented from her place as the left Rook. "Too many pieces treated as Kings, isn't it?"

"I..." Weasley frowned, hesitating. "I don't think we can win this. It's the last good position we'll be this game but we're a couple pieces short. It'll never work, sorry..."

Valeria scanned the giant chessboard, realizing Weasley was right. The white pieces had been slowly pushing them back, taking control of the center and now they were in place to deliver their final offensive in only a few moves. She'd considered any alternative means to bypass the obstacle, of course. Using Harry's invisibility cloak to sneak ahead, or one of the brooms from the room with the winged keys to fly over. Unfortunately, the heavy door at the far side of the chamber was closed and almost certainly charmed to open only if their side won. The chamber didn't have too high a ceiling either and the two armies of sixteen giant chess pieces each were a serious threat; if they could fight each other, they could definitely fight intruders that didn't follow the rules. They were magical automatons, animated statues with rudimentary virtual intelligence - they could even answer questions with simple gestures. Few spells she knew could work on them at all, none against so many in an enclosed space. Professor McGonagal was a very competent and smart witch and she'd probably covered almost any eventuality in her commands. On the other hand, they were already losing. And no programming could match real intelligence in adapting to the unexpected.

"Weasley, you're sure you could win this if we had an extra piece or two?" she asked.

"Of course but..." he looked at the chessboard and then at her. "What do you have in mind?"

"Those who can't do, cheat." she paraphrased as she raised her wand.

Professor McGonagal had certainly programmed all the rules and her knowledge of chess into the pieces. Break the rules and the pieces would attack. She'd also expect a direct attack - try to harm the pieces or force the far door and they'd probably mob you. But there was one thing left she might not have thought of.

 _"Colovaria!"_

The only pieces that were exactly the same between the two armies were the pawns, apart from their color; every other piece was distinctive. But even pawns, at the right place and the right time, could make a critical difference. So Valeria used the Colour-Change Charm on one of them. There was resistance, something pushing against her magic. But this one charm was the first she'd gotten right with a wand, the first she'd made into an enchantment, the first she'd applied on a living being permanently. The resistance was overwhelmed, and one white pawn turned black. No pieces reacted; this wasn't an event their creator had predicted. She sighed in relief.

"Think you can win this now?" she asked.

"What... you... how?" the redhead strategist frowned at the chessboard and nodded. "Yes... I think this will do."

 **...**

"Gryffindors and their self-sacrificing idiocy!" Valeria shouted as she looked down at Ron Weasley's unconscious form. "Why didn't he say something, ask me to color-shift another pawn?" She punched the nearest wall. It didn't budge and her hand hurt.

"Maybe he didn't want to risk it." Harry said as he dragged his friend against the wall with Daphne's help and bandaged his slowly bleeding head wound. "Maybe he thought the risk of all of us being attacked for cheating was too much."

"Bloody Gryffindor..." Valeria growled again and shook her head. She might have respected the redhead's determination and loyalty before his asinine move, maybe even admired it, but she'd always prefer a healthy dose of caution and a good plan to charging ahead like that.

"I think he'll be fine." Neville said, inspecting his housemate. He and Harry led the three girls through the dark doorway and into the next room.

"What's that stench?" Tracey complained, gagging and trying to hold her last couple of meals where they belonged.

"No idea - be on your guard." Harry said, wand at the ready.

"As if I need you to tell me that, Potter." Daphne huffed indignantly. "I'm a better duelist than..."

 _"PROTEGO!"_

Cast by Valeria, Harry, and Daphne together, the layered Shield Charm managed to block the enormous club that swung out of the near-darkness, but only just. A huge lumbering shape followed it, a humanoid at least five feet taller than Hagrid and even wider, with arms and legs nearly as thick as they were tall, brown-grey skin that looked like stone and a spherical, misshapen head with a huge lump on its forehead. It was a troll, and a big one at that. It looked as if someone had knocked it out recently too, but their delay in the chessboard had given it enough time to wake up.

"This is bad!" Valeria said, jumping back from another massive but awkward blow she didn't dare try to block.

"You think?!" Daphne and Harry said in unison, both throwing knockback jinxes at its back. The troll barely even noticed them. It turned its very stupid gaze towards Tracey and made as if to grab her.

 _"INCENDIO!"_

The torrent of white-hot fire from Valeria's wand could have roasted a man alive with little trouble. It had roasted Redcaps before. But the troll's leg alone was thicker than a man, with extremely tough skin and maybe a measure of magic resistance; it only got a second-degree burn.

"Well, that part of my brother's gaming books was wrong!" Valeria joked as the troll roared in pain and flailed around with its club. It broke Neville's Shield Charm with only a glancing blow and sent him tumbling.

 _"Petrificus Totalus!"_

 _"Tittillando!"_

 _"Colloshoo!"_

Harry's attempt to bind it failed to work at all, as did Tracey's tickling hex. The magical glue from Daphne's Stickfast Hex was marginally more effective, managing to hold its legs immobile for about five seconds, until some extra effort from the troll broke the stones she'd stuck them to.

"We need to concentrate fire!" Valeria shouted, trying to be heard over the beast's angry roars as she repeated the fire-making charm. Four other voices joined her, to lesser individual effect but still considerable when combined.

"INCENDIO!"

The troll roared again in fury as its torso was briefly bathed in flames but again only took minor burns from their assault. Swinging its massive club faster than before, it aimed for the more hesitant and larger target out of their group; Neville. This time, their layered Shield Charms failed to block the force of the blow entirely and the poor Gryffindor boy was sent hurtling against the nearest wall over twenty feet away. He didn't get up.

 _"Everte Statum! Everte Statum! Everte Statum! Everte Statum! Everte Statum!"_

Harry's almost blind barrage of knockback jinxes was soon joined by the effort of the three Slytherin girls but they only managed to anger their huge enemy even further. It slammed its club to the ground with great force, Harry narrowly avoiding the blow but still being pelted by pieces of shattered stone.

"There's no way we're winning this through force!" Daphne shouted, trying to be heard over the din of the battle. "We need to outmaneuver it!"

"I'm all ears! My good ideas ran out back in the giant chessboard!" Valeria said as she levitated Harry out of the troll's reach. The boy was forced to return the favor with a knockback jinx when the troll suddenly swung its club towards her. She was thrown off her feet and felt as if she'd been kicked in the gut but at least she hadn't been reduced to a greasy smear on the floor. Instead of replying, Daphne flicked her wand towards the massive creature.

 _"Glacis!"_

Nothing happened to the troll. The floor underneath it however was another matter; it froze over in an instant, being coated with a thin layer of ice. The massive beast lost its balance when it attempted its next swing and fell flat on its back. Its massive club fell out of its reach and it had nothing to grab onto to help it climb to its feet. Unfortunately, Daphne was still within reach of its really long arms and got a backhanded flap for her troubles before she could raise a Shield Charm. She flew thirty feet and fell back down near the entrance to the chessboard chamber, neither stirring nor making a sound.

"Daphne!" Valeria's hand clenched her wand so hard her knuckles went white against the wood. She aimed at the troll's fallen club and through gritted teeth spoke an incantation.

"Wingardium Leviosa!"

The club was massive - much heavier than anything she'd previously lifted. Valeria didn't care about that. The troll was flailing angrily near her position, about to come to its feet and resume its rampage. She didn't care about that either. She just guided the ponderous mass of the wooden weapon until she could slam it on the troll's head. The beast groaned so she hit it over the head again. After the second blow it stirred feebly. After the fourth it no longer moved. After the tenth half the room had been smeared red and the troll was no longer alive. She let the bloody club fall back to the ground.

"How's Daphne?" she asked Tracey in a falsely calm voice as the brunette checked over the wounded.

"Unconscious but not in danger." the other Slytherin answered. "Maybe a couple of broken bones but little more."

"Stay with her and Neville, will you?" Tracey nodded gratefully and levitated the two wounded back into the chessboard chamber. Maybe the other girl had reached her limit of mortal peril for the night. Valeria wasn't sure she had - she was too angry to think straight. She looked at Harry. The Boy-Who-Lived had the same angry and determined expression on his face that must be on hers too.

"Let's go."

 **...**

A sheet of black fire blocked the corridor ahead of them, while purple flames danced behind them. A single array of potion bottles was the only thing in the room, a riddle upon it.

 _Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind,_  
 _Two of us will help you, which ever you would find,_  
 _One among us seven will let you move ahead,_  
 _Another will transport the drinker back instead,_  
 _Two among our number hold only nettle wine,_  
 _Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line._  
 _Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore,_  
 _To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:_  
 _First, however slyly the poison tries to hide_  
 _You will always find some on nettle wine's left side;_  
 _Second, different are those who stand at either end,_  
 _But if you would move onward, neither is your friend;  
_ _Third, as you see clearly, all are different size,_  
 _Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;_  
 _Fourth, the second left and the second on the right_  
 _Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight._

"Which one do you think is is?" Harry asked, anxiously going through the riddle again and again in his mind.

"None of them." Valeria said, examining the doorway with the black flames carefully.

"What?!"

"This is Professor Snape we're talking about here, Harry!" she said, exasperated with how naive Gryffindors could be. "The only place the right potion would be is his pocket. Those other potions here? They'd all contain poison, or the Draught of Living Death to stop intruders. Why does he have to tell the truth on a riddle any intruder has to solve in order to move ahead?"

"Merlin, you're right!" He scowled at the false riddle, then stared at the flames. "What do we do now?"

"Do you remember the softening charm?"

"Yes. But what does it have to do with anything?"

She pointed at the stone archway. "We cast it there, together and repeatedly. Trust me." she finished at seeing his unsure expression.

"All right. One... two... three..."

 _"Spongify! Spongify! Spongify! Spongify!"_

At the first double softening charm, the stone archway began to gain the consistency of rubber. At the second, it had become more like a sponge. At the third, it began to bend under its own weight and at the fourth it finally collapsed, momentarily smothering the magical flames. Valeria and Harry jumped through the brief gap and into the chamber beyond...


	18. of Wraiths and Men

**Three rewrites and I'm still not satisfied with this. As an end to an entire book's plot it is kind of a let down. Then again, Valeria is a twelve year old. She can't do the more exciting stuff yet action-wise and however horrified she might be at Dumbledore's ideals there's only so much she can argue with an adult. OTOH, something major happens in this chapter. One internet cookie to whoever finds it.**

 **Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling owns Harry Potter. If I did, Flamel would have shared the recipe for the stone long ago and every wizard would have been virtually immortal. Pretty boring story that would make, no?**

 **...**

"In your face, Potter!" Valeria exclaimed as the two of them entered what looked like the final room. It was a rather small chamber of ancient stone walls and a curved ceiling in the bowels of the castle, so old even evidence of mortar had long since been washed away through the centuries. The room was empty except for an equally ancient mirror at its center - a garish medieval thing of tarnished silver taller than Valeria was, elaborately decorated with both various carvings and a pompous inscription in mirrored script - and a familiar wizard with an even more garish purple turban. "I knew Professor Snape couldn't be responsible for all this."

"Ah, miss Campbell. I wondered whether we'd meet here tonight, after our brief encounter in the Forbidden Forest." Professor Quirrel said without a hint of stuttering as he turned around to face her. Gone was the meek little man scared of even his own shadow. In his place stood someone confident in himself, forceful and decisive in his movements, a hint of danger in his condescending tone and calculating stare. "But what of mister Potter? He was oh so inquisitive all year long only to miss the grand finale?"

"He couldn't join us." Valeria shrugged, answering Quirrel's mockery with indifference. "Too busy mopping about his potions grade, I'd reckon." No he wasn't but Quirrel didn't know that. Now if she could just delay him enough for Harry to do his part...

"A pity. It might have been... entertaining to meet him." The thieving Professor's expression was pensive, his expression unfocused. She got the feeling he wasn't really talking to her anymore - and that would not do.

"Potter's opinion would differ on that, I'm sure." She gave the dangerous wizard her best fake smile. "How did you attempt to kill him, anyway? Both in the Gryffindor tryouts and in out first flying lesson, I mean. There was no visible spell effect, no incantation - you weren't even there."

"Some advanced magic only requires line of sight and a whisper, miss Campbell. Usually only mind magic but those knowledgeable enough and powerful enough can send other effects through it, such as curses." He returned her smile indulgently, like a good teacher talking to his best student. "You would have learned of them in your seventh year Defense, had you not come here tonight. Never let it be said I did not fulfill your last requests." She failed to conceal a shudder at that but Quirrel didn't seem to mind. His mocking visage showed genuine pleasure at her fear - which, of course, made it even more disturbing.

"But now this impromptu lesson must come to a close. However interesting it might be for the both of us, I do have other things to do." He glanced back towards the center of the room. "Such as find how this wondrous mirror works. I can see the Stone, yes; I am offering it to my Master. But how do I get it?"

"Your master?!" Valeria gasped, playing dumb. Where the bloody Hell was Harry while she was playing twenty questions trying to delay a dark wizard? Had he not found the Stone yet? And even if he hadn't, couldn't he curse Quirrel in the back or something? Quirrel shot her an annoyed look. He snapped his fingers and ropes manifested out of thin air. Propelled by magic, they were directed at her obviously to bind and disable her but they stopped in mid-air, wrapping around her precast Shield Charm. The pressure against it mounted quickly and it became harder and harder to keep it up even in the first second or two; Valeria had no illusions she could hold back an attack from a full-grown wizard. On the other hand, she didn't have to.

"Incendio!"

The familiar torrent of flame burned through the ropes before her and continued on its way towards Quirrel... only to stop in its tracks at another gesture from him. Valeria gulped in fear. Flame-freezing and Incarceration spells were fourth-year material and he was doing them without even a wand!

"You do seem to like fire, don't you?" he mocked. "How about this, then?"

Her shield shattered as if struck by a troll's club, the invisible blow hurtling her backwards. Realizing what Quirrel had attempted to do as she was flung tumbling head over heels, she frantically tried to roll, grab a stone, anything to miss the curtain of sizzling black flames she'd been banished towards. Her desperate efforts paid off, a half roll ending with her smashing against the stone archway less that a foot from the flames. Her back struck rock with bruising force, her head rang and her vision swam and fiery pain spread across her right arm as it got too close to the black fire despite the protective dragonskin gloves she wore.

"Petrificus Totalus!"

The Full-Body Bind hit Quirrel straight in the back and the traitorous Professor toppled like a felled tree. Harry Potter seemed to appear out of thin air as he came out of the Invisibility Cloak he'd been hiding under and scrambled to her help.

"Are you OK? Did you break anything? he didn't get you with a spell, did he?"

"Q-quirrel..." she tried to speak, point Harry towards the evil wizard again but her head still hurt and her limbs didn't want to work. She'd probably be OK in a minute or two - except they didn't have one. Her stomach clenched, insisting that every meal of the past day vacate the premises, and she couldn't even tell if it was a concussion or the plan falling apart. With the black fire back in full force Harry could not flee, even if he'd already had gotten the Stone and not revealed himself out of a desire to protect her.

Quirrel came to his feet, obviously having ended the curse as easily as he now conjured ropes once more and bound Harry with them. Valeria tried to cast a spell but couldn't. The stone floor was nice and comfy, wasn't it? Why did she even want to move for? Better to rest here... catch her breath... it'd only take a minute...

 **...**

"How touching…" an inhuman voice hissed, dragging Valeria back to wakefulness. It was hideous like nails on a chalkboard and dry like the sibilant whisper of a desert wind. "I always value bravery….Yes, boy, your parents were brave…I killed your father first; and he put up a courageous fight…but your mother needn't have died…she was trying to protect you…Now give me the Stone, unless you want her to have died in vain."

"NEVER!"

The good news were that Harry must have somehow gotten his hands on the Stone. Even more impressive, he'd managed to escape his bindings and now stood up against their enemy. The bad news? Said enemy had grown a second face at the back of his head. Valeria could not even begin to describe how revolting and unnatural she found that image, beyond just the fact that the second face must belong to Voldemort himself. How did that face even speak? Had it grown a connection to Quirrel's own lungs and vocal cords? How could it see? Did the extra eyes, nose and mouth dig into the back of Quirrel's skull, totally messing up his brain? She totally regretted reading all those books on human anatomy at that moment.

"SEIZE HIM!"

Quirrel sprang forth at full speed despite having to do so bloody backwards, toppling Harry before he could bring his wand to bear. Harry had been trying to avoid him but he'd had nowhere to go; the room was a closed space and rather small. Quirrel made to grab something from Harry's pocket but as soon as one of Harry's flailing hands touched his own, his skin sizzled as if he'd touched red-hot iron. Both Harry and Quirrel screamed but kept fighting for a tiny little ruby-like gem just small enough to fit in a child's hand.

Valeria knew she had to do something and fast, before Quirrel remembered he was a wizard and cursed Harry into oblivion. Wondering whether having two faces made one insane, she groaned, put in a tremendous effort... and promptly fell back to her knees. No way she could fight Quirrel like that - if she missed she'd waster her and Harry's last chance to escape from this alive. Better use another way, she thought and started focusing as much as she could on casting the spell she wanted.

Only moments later, Harry had been hurled to the ground again. Despite the many sizzling burns he'd somehow dealt Quirrel during their brief clash, he looked too exhausted to continue and Quirrel was already raising his hand to perform some deadly curse under the continual urging of his second face. Valeria couldn't have that so she flicked her wand, levitating the Philosopher's Stone towards her and catching it.

"Hey Two-Face! Looking for this?" she shouted as much as she was able, lifting her hand for all to see what she held. The fight paused, both Quirrel and Harry turning to stare at her. "Go fetch!" and with that, she threw the gleaming red stone into the black fire.

"NOOOOOOO!"

The wailing denial from two voices, one human and one monstrous, didn't prevent the flames from flashing a brilliant red, their roar followed by the puff of an exploding lightbulb and tiny, blackened, burning pieces being blasted all over the room.

"YOU WILL PAY FOR THAT MUDBL-AAAARGHH!"

The distraction of a stone's destruction gave Harry the opening he needed to lay a hand on the second face in the back of Quirrel's head. Flesh sizzled and burned, an acrid stench of burning skin and fat filling the room as Harry used the strange power he'd displayed to deliver to Quirrel his just desserts. The vile Professor collapsed and did not get up. Harry stumbled too, and turned to give Valeria a tentative smile. That's how he missed the cloud of black smoke rising from their Defense professor's body behind him. It formed an ugly face, launched itself through Harry like a ghost and felled him outright then fled through the roaring black fire.

Valeria stared at the scene for a few more seconds, fumbled for a healing potion and a few more things from her belt, then made a mess of vomit of the stone floor and leaned against a wall to await for help...

 **...**

White sheets, white walls, potions ingredients and disinfectant; she was in the hospital wing again.

"Ah, miss Campbell!" a voice far more genial and pleasant than Quirrel's greeted her. "You're finally awake." Its owner was a very tall man, with long silver hair and even longer beard, purple and gold robes studded with silvery depictions of various constellations, half-moon spectacles and twinlking blue eyes.

"What happened since I was last awake?" she asked Albus Dumbledore with more than a little apprehension.

"As I was not there when you last fell asleep or unconscious, I cannot say with certainty." the Headmaster said with a small smile. "But I can make an educated guess. I must have arrived only moments after you and mr. Potter were knocked out but by then it was all over. I carried the two of you to the hospital wing."

"Where's Harry? Our other friends?" she asked at Dumbledore's words, remembering all that happened during the firth with Quirrel and the traps before, the number of wounds all of them accumulated. The other beds in the hospital wing were empty and other than a small pile of presents by her bedside she couldn't see anything else of note.

"Calm yourself dear girl, you are a bit behind the times." He said. "All your friends have already recovered. I even had a talk with mister Potter about your little adventure after his recent recovery; you are the last to finish your treatment at madam Pomfrey's capable hands. Head wounds are nasty things - or so I hear."

"Quirrel? Voldemort? The Stone?" Valeria insisted. She was relieved that her friends were all well but if the Dark Lord...

"I see you are most insistent, just like mister Potter." The ancient wizard sighed. "Voldemort escaped. He is still out there somewhere though, perhaps looking for another body to share…not being truly alive, he cannot be killed. He left Quirrell to die; he shows just as little mercy to his followers as his enemies. As for the Stone, mister Potter shared with me what you did. I must thank you for its destruction. Had it remained it would have been a tempting target for Voldemort and any other wizard that would follow him down the path to darkness."

"But..." Valeria couldn't believe what she was hearing. She'd really gotten away with it? No punishments? "But what about Nicholas Flamel?"

"As I told mister Potter, Nicolas and I have had a little chat, and agreed it's all for the best. He and his wife have enough Elixir stored to set their affairs in order and then, yes, they will die." He smiled at Valeria's gobsmacked expression. "My dear, to one as young as you I'm sure it seems incredible, but to Nicolas and Perenelle, it really is like going to bed after a very, very long day. After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure. You know, the Stone was really not such a wonderful thing. As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all — the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them."

Valeria slowly retrieved her jaw from the floor after a good minute of silence. Her guilt and apprehension were fading now, quickly giving way to anger.

"You told this to Harry too, did you?" she demanded in a growl.

"Why yes, I did." Dumbledore confirmed, perplexed. Oh she'd show him confusion all right. He'd have a great deal of it once she was done with him - where was her bloody wand?

"His parents are in their next great adventure, are they?" she said snidely. "They just went for a little trip, did they? Left their beloved son behind, to grow up without a family, because choosing more life was precisely the worst for them?" Dumbledore was no longer smiling.

"Given your 'wisdom' you wouldn't mind me stealing from you or the school, would you sir? After all, money isn't a good thing so why would taking it be a crime?" She snorted. "How about a free ticket to that great adventure by means of fire? That phrase, 'by means of fire', is the exact meaning of the Incendio incantation in latin. Would you like me to cast it on you? Sir?"

"Miss Campbell you're upset and..." Dumbledore started but she interrupted him.

"Upset? Voldemort wanted the Stone to get a whole new body. How many people with far lighter but still incurable injuries and conditions are there, sir? How many die of them or are crippled? How many in the six centuries your friend Flamel kept the Stone and the knowledge of its creation to himself?" She turned her back to Hogwarts' headmaster and lay down in the hospital bed once more, their discussion complete.

She didn't notice when the old wizard left; she stayed awake but unseeing until late at night, considering everything that happened...


	19. Year One End

**Wow, a hundred follows already; you guys (and gals) are awesome!**

 **ro781727: Valeria is twelve. She isn't going to be always right, no matter how smart or well-read. You do get a partial cookie for noticing one of the hints though, even if not interpreted correctly. Hopefully, this chapter clears things up a bit.**

 **Urazz: Yep, Valeria isn't likely to follow those kinds of beliefs. From her POV Dumbledore is wrong - but that doesn't mean she is always going to be correct.**

 **Serpentine13: the dumbest wizard of his generation used Fiendfyre in his 7th year (and killed himself). Valeria is much smarter than Vincent Crabbe so expect her to do it better and earlier.  
**

 **BTW, the Philosopher's Stone dungeon crawl happened at the 4th of June. School year ends at the 30th and with Voldie retreating earlier than the books in this story, Harry Potter didn't spend as much time in the infirmary. Expect lots of deviations from canon from this point on though, as always, events that wouldn't have been affected by the changes will still happen as normal. As for Valeria's thoughts on Quirrelmort, kids that realize just how bad an immortal serial killer can be are few but not entirely absent. Especially after getting a wakeup call in the form of several near-death experiences.  
**

 **Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling. I'm just messing up the canon stories for fun - not profit.**

 **...**

The remaining days of June Valeria spent in the library; she only took off an evening to send a letter. With both lessons and exams over for the year, why return to the Slytherin common room before curfew and subject herself to more dismal interactions with her fellow housemates? Besides, there was much research to be done; even with twelve hours a day frantically looking through the library's many tomes she was little closer to understanding the events of that night.

"There you are!" a boy said as he took up a seat next to her own. Despite having to whisper to avoid madam Pince's notice, Harry Potter could put quite a bit of exasperation into his voice. "Daphne said you were to be found here. Something about your radical new diet, what with skipping lunch and dinner every day, the Leaving Feast included."

"Surprised? What recent events could limit one's appetite?" she mocked him back. "Did we happen upon wizard-eating monsters? Deadly traps? Murderously psychopathic former Dark Lords?" She raised one pale eyebrow in question. "Oh wait! We did! And in the safest place in Britain, no less."

"You know what I mean!" Harry stated, pointing at all the books strewn haphazardly over the table. "Val, we're your friends. We're worried about you." He lowered his voice once more and gave her his best serious expression. "You can't keep avoiding us like that. Books are important but not everything."

Valeria sighed and shut _'Quintessence: a Quest'_ with finality. The NEWT-level textbook on elemental charms and partial intro to elemental alchemy was a bit beyond her level anyway. Why did Tracey have to spread out that silly nickname? Why did the others try to care without understanding what she was doing? She bit her lip in consternation. Why hadn't she asked for help? Stupid, stupid, stupid - they could have checked far more books!

"Harry, did it ever occur to you... to understand what we went through?" She pointed at the books on the table. "Advanced animation. Cursed fire. Wandless magic. Alchemy. Possession. Do you even realize how much advanced magic we encountered?"

"Let me guess: you're trying to learn it all by the end of the month." Harry said with a fond smile before shaking his head. "We're firsties. It'll be years before we have to do anything like it. I'd much rather worry about the House Cup."

"Don't even start!" she said, eyes narrowing. "Dumbledore and his last-minute point awards. A hundred and sixty points to you, Neville and the Weasley, only a hundred for Tracey, Daphne and me? Favoritism much?"

"How did you know?"

"Neville came by half an hour ago." She retrieved a piece of meat pie from her purse and bit into it. "Brought me some food, too... too domestic for his own good. If he isn't careful some pureblood girl will snag him in a marriage contract and run him and his estate with an iron fist." Harry's face went tomato-red at that and she laughed at him.

"Seriously though, Harry." She pointed at the books again, schooling her face into a non-expression to hide all hints of fear. "We really need to learn all that - and soon."

"You sure? Ron will faint just by seeing - OW!" Her punch to his ribs interrupted Harry's latest attempt at improving her mood.

"As much as seeing that would amuse me Harry, a certain dark wizard that wants to murder us is still on the loose." She scowled. "One that, according to Dumbledore's words, cannot be killed. Fancy facing an immortal terrorist that can bend other wizards to his will or throw curses by looking at you the next time you go out to buy some milk this coming summer? But hey, let's not worry about him; the House Cup is more important." Her words having wiped the smile off Harry's face for good, the two of them stayed in the library till late, worrying about all that had given Valeria nightmares the past week.

 **...**

The official results to their end-of-year exams came a few days later. Nobody who'd paid attention during the exams themselves or discussed them afterwards was much surprised at what they got, though having an exact number on an official note was nice. And suddenly, their wardrobes were empty, their trunks were packed, Neville's toad was found lurking in a corner of the toilets and notes were handed out to all students, warning them not to use magic over the holidays.

"I always hope they'll forget to give us these," said Fred Weasley sadly as the student body moved slowly out of the Entrance Hall and towards a small fleet of carriages. The nightmarish, skeletal, winged, half-dragon horses pulling them didn't seem interested in their passengers at all and nobody else seemed to notice them so Valeria chalked it up to generic wizarding world weirdness and replied to Fred instead.

"What are you complaining about, Terror A?" she asked. "It's not as if these notes will affect you at all."

"They won't?" he said, giving her a questioning stare - probably about the nickname.

"Of course not." Daphne scoffed as she and Tracey approached her and the twins. "Every pureblood knows the ministry can detect what magic is used near an underage wizard or witch but not who cast it. Trying to enforce the restriction on magical homes is impossible as parents would have to avoid using magic too."

"Rub it in, will you?" Valeria grumbled, ignoring the Twins' expressions of glee. "I'm limited to potions and existing magic items for the next two months."

"Having seen what you can do with those Val, I don't think you'll be terribly inconvenienced." Tracey snickered. "I've never seen a Malfoy so cowed before."

"Val, listen." Daphne lowered her voice conspiratorially, the Twins listening in and trying not to be obvious about it. "I'll try to convince Mother to invite you during the summer. Father's a duelist - only reason Mother married him, I think - and he could tutor us. Malfoy tries anything next year, we flatten him."

Suddenly, summer didn't seem so bad anymore...

 **...**

The Hogwarts express was moving at a decent pace towards London while Valeria, Tracey and Daphne were using their last few hours of unsupervised magic use to their fullest when a large avian clacked its beak against their compartment's window. It was a messenger falcon and it carried a fairly large package wrapped in expensive parchment and golden thread.

"Anyone expecting something like that?" Tracey asked, observing the bird of prey curiously.

"I was expecting a letter." Valeria said, opening the window and letting the bird in. Unsurprisingly, it delivered its cargo right in her lap and flew off. "This is rather... extravagant." Her name and current position _-Hogwarts Express, last wagon, second compartment to the left-_ was also written in gold on the package itself.

"Is it from anyone we know?" Daphne asked, looking over her shoulder as she carefully unwrapped it to reveal a tiny, dark-red vial, a curved mirror of some yellowish crystal wider than her palm, two small boxes filled with tiny white stones and black powder respectively, and a letter.

"Oooh, is it from a boy?"

"Shut up Tracey." Daphne said almost affectionately and gave her a pat in the back of her head.

"No... it isn't." Valeria said cautiously as she opened the letter and carefully read what it said and what it didn't.

 _Miss Campbell,_

 _You need not worry about our reaction to your recent actions regarding our property. It is not something we could have found fault with, both before and after our recent discussion with our young friend. For well over half of our life we've felt we've accomplished everything we ever would. Sadly, our skill in Arts beyond our own was never very great and when one has a single weapon to go to battle with, no matter how great, being stabbed from behind and such weapon being handed over to the enemy becomes a near-certainty. Beyond that singular issue, many other minor matters added their weight towards our final decision. The two of us were far from young at the time of my initial success, and surviving without living can only be tolerated for so long. Then, the state of art in recent years played a role as well. Art was what first brought the two of us together and our greatest love; seeing it diminish over time added to our burden. Furthered it was by the absence of heirs, legacy. We gave too much of our life before to our Art, and the Art allowed us no chance for them thereafter. It is something our young friend shares and the one thing we'd wish to no other. Whatever your future endeavors, we hope you'll try to remember that. And last but not least, dissonance. As you must already know, the young can learn much when thrown into other times or worlds. But old people are set in their ways, unyielding and brittle. What is new and exciting to you would seem alien to us. And for all those reasons our young friend found it so easy to persuade us not to repeat our last performance - something not beyond the skills of a good Artist, yes?_

 _We wish you well in your future endeavors. Whatever else you make of our distant acquaintance, remember those few words of warning. We pass them on unto you, with our blessing - and a handful of gifts to remember us by. A spoonful of coal dust, remains of burnt offerings from my old lab. A pinch of bath salts, to promote relaxation and cleanliness. My better half's citrine mirror, in use for many a year under the sun. And a small vial of dragon's blood, our only gift with more than sentimental value. Needful things, all of them, for following a certain path._

 _Respectfully,_

 _An old friend._

So they knew. The blonde Slytherin witch sat heavily on her seat, considering a very old man's advice. Had she misjudged him and "his young friend" ? She couldn't say and couldn't ask. The letter had been very circumspect, never speaking plainly about anything. That, at least, was something she could definitely agree with. Better everyone think...

"Val, why were you looking so long at that blank parchment?" Tracey asked in confusion.

Charmed to be readable by her alone? Better and better. Whatever she wanted to say about the man's beliefs and advice, he had not been careless at all. But why support, even encourage her? Just reading through those books in the past month had shown her how inexperienced she still was - most of the upper year textbooks were still beyond her, let alone any more arcane matters. And what was with their strange gifts? She could not make head or tails of them at all!

Great, another mystery. As if insane homicidal immortals, centuries-old prejudice, an entire new world and being involved in an event of at least national importance weren't enough. Then again, the Sorting Hat had placed her in Slytherin for a reason. And she'd always loved a challenge...

 **...**

Daphne Greengrass was an old-style Slytherin from an ancient family of old-style Slytherins. Mother had nurtured her ambition and determination almost as far back as she'd taught her quiet observation, good manners and the importance of tradition. She was not one to make friends lightly, even at the age of twelve, and her originally approaching Valeria Campbell had been on a misunderstanding and a whim. She'd always tried to emulate Mother, keep her emotions in check and calmly consider all consequences before settling on an advantageous decision. Unfortunately, as Mother often reminded her fondly, she was still a child in many ways. And that wasn't a bad thing. But she was very happy things had turned out in her favor too.

Her new friend had proven intelligent and capable despite being a muggleborn and thus totally unprepared for the magical world. They'd had a fun year together but, just as importantly, they'd improved their position within Slytherin House and made friendships and alliances that would prove beneficial in their future careers. Though diminished, the Houses of Longbottom and Potter were still rich and politically important. House Weasley was often seen as insignificant by many due to its lack of capital but Mother had discussed with her the importance of actually having many strong wizards by your side in addition to mere capital - and the youngest Curse-Breaker and Dragon-Handler of the past decade were nothing to sneeze at. Not to mention that all those second to sixth sons could continue the Greengrass line without her having to lose her family name and eventual Ladyship. The youngest Weasley boy was... annoying, but his twin brothers were far less so.

As for their end-of-year adventure, the jury was still out. Preventing the Dark Lord from returning would not sit well in some circles but Daphne could understand why her muggleborn friend had decided to help do it. Other, lighter circles might see the Greengrass family under a new light after that, too. And if facing the Dark Lord and surviving while being a first year didn't constitute proof of great talent, Daphne didn't know what did. She considered the package Valeria had just received too. Was it from one of their Professors and if so, why the secrecy? Only an adult wizard could hide a letter so. That, among with a few other things didn't add up - such as Dumbledore's words Valeria had shared with them. Despite living in them, Daphne didn't much like secrets... and she vowed to find some answers as soon as possible. The situation was...

Her thoughts were interrupted by the compartment door opening and then immediately closing. A small glass vial was thrown through, only to shatter on the train car's floor with a barely audible hiss. The three girls jumped up at once, trying to open the door and hunt down whoever annoyed them but it didn't budge.

 _"Alohomora!"_

"No good!" Tracey said. "It's still *cough* stuck. And we *cough**cough*..."

"Tracey *cough* ...break it! *cough* ...something's... *cough* ...wrong!"

Valeria was certainly correct. Daphne couldn't breathe; she felt as if an invisible hand was crushing her throat, choking off her air supply. She tried to cast a spell but failed dismally so she joined the other two girls in trying to kick the door open. Unfortunately, three twelve year old girls weren't exactly physically imposing; unable to perform magic, they were locked in with whatever was choking them. Daphne saw Tracey collapse first, then Valeria quickly follow her. Darkness was gnawing at the edge of her vision; even being larger physically than the other two and slower to affect didn't help much. Her last thought was that this was a stupid way to die for someone who'd helped fend off the Dark Lord...

 **...**

"Are you OK?" an older boy's voice brought Daphne back to the world of the living. He sounded a bit like Ronald Weasley, annoying and pompous. Sure enough, when she opened her eyes a tall boy in Gryffindor red and gold stood over her. Hair the color of carrots and a prefect's badge completed the image.

"Of course they aren't OK Percy!" A girl in Ravenclaw colors said, a tall brunette with her own Prefect's badge. "They almost suffocated in garrotting gas! Had the window not been open or had the gas quantity been any greater, they would have died!" Daphne struggled to her feet, looking at her two still-unconscious friends. They looked well enough, slowly recovering from the comparatively greater dose. Someone had tried to kill them. Gotten pretty close, too. And without witnesses or a means to track potions byproducts they'd never know who it was.

No rest for the wicked - not even during the summer holidays.

 **END OF YEAR ONE**


	20. Family Time

**SinghSong: yep, alchemy is going to play an important part. There are mentions** ** **in Pottermore** of the alchemical process that is going to eventually make an appearance in this story. Also, Voldie's homunculus is an alchemical achievement as well - life alchemy can get really dark. Of course, Valeria is not nearly knowledgeable enough to make a new Stone or even use it, and won't be for some time.**

 **ro781727: To misquote one of my favorite older movies; "Light side, dark side, you judge too rashly". More on the Greengrasses in chapters to follow.**

 **adm-frb: Whoa, how did I miss that? Thanks for pointing it out. I'd make a Dumbledore joke on my few mistakes being proportionately much greater but I doubt I got the intellectual capacity to back it up (or the limited number of mistakes for that matter).**

 **We never did see in the books how any of the muggleborn students interacted with their families. Didn't all those parents have anything to say about magic or even the downright terrifying situations their kids found themselves in? Not that Valeria's family is any more typical than Harry's was...**

 **Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling. Had it belonged to me, I'd have done a far poorer job of putting in so much horror under the radar.**

 **...**

"...and then the Dark Wanker fled Hogwarts in wraith form and we won the day." Valeria finished her story and Claude very nearly choked.

"Namecalling at its worst. And from such a sweet and innocent witch, too!" her brother said with a groan. "What's the world coming to?"

"Well, Dumbledore was right in at least one thing, from what Harry shared of their conversation." She responded pensively. "Fear of the name does promote fear of its bearer. Since I couldn't find his real name anywhere, and as a human I reserve the right to name the nameless, wanker it is."

With their parents away on business for the day, the two siblings were holed up in Valeria's room discussing her first year in a magical boarding school. She'd shared a lot of it with her whole family already but some details she wouldn't trust anyone with, other than her brother. Besides, a fifteen year old nerd could understand things about magic a trained diplomat or someone in her father's line of work would not.

"I still can't believe you went to an actual dungeon crawl - inside the school, no less!" Claude exclaimed for the upteenth time.

"Why, brother dear, is that envy I hear?" she said with a grin. Spending the last few hours going through those events in minute detail had finally helped her understand what Claude saw in those games of his. Of course, she found facing actual dark wizards more on the terrifying side than fun, though she wouldn't turn down the loot. Even a hint at the secrets of everlasting life and endless wealth was something many would gleefully kill for and she had a bit more than a hint. Now, if only she knew how to use it...

"Prat!" Claude declared her and gave her a mock punch in the shoulder. Then he frowned and checked his notes. "The first trap was Hagrid's Cerberus. And both you and Harry are good friends with him?"

"Yep. He's a nice guy, for a towering half-giant." She smiled fondly. "Fascinated with monsters, but a bit naive. Doesn't see that a mild inconvenience to him would be mortal peril for most of us. Then again, our classes are not exactly safer. A minor potion mishap can melt metal, let alone flesh. A minor charms mishap can set someone on fire."

"Uhuh." Claude said, not paying attention. "Second trap, a killer plant. That Neville boy easily recognized it, no?"

"Of course! He's the best in our year in Herbology."

"As Harry is in flying and the Weasley brat is in chess, from what your best friend told you..."

"Claude, what's up?" Valeria asked, seeing her brother's deepening frown.

"The sixth trap you beat with a simple charm and from what Harry told you, the headmaster himself gave him that invisibility cloak and told him how that mirror worked." He paused again, his expression that of intense concentration. "Do you see what I see?"

"You can't mean..."

"The traps were pretty much tailored to your group's abilities. In a game we do it all the time to give players a challenge but still expecting them to win in the end." He shook his head. "I have no idea why your teachers would do that to you. In fact, I wonder if you and the girls were supposed to be there at all."

"Oh come on! Now you're talking out of your backside." she protested, jumping off her seat. "We really helped. You think the other three would have managed without us?"

"Did you, really?" Claude wondered. "Had Neville not come to find you, he'd be there from the start. He'd have told them how to get through the killer plant. Harry would have gotten the key, as before. An uninjured Weasley could have won the game with only three pieces to protect, and a faster victory would have allowed them to proceed before the troll recovered. And the fire trap... maybe it was an honest riddle. After all, Quirrel went through it without melting the archway." He shook his head. "All things considered, you and the girls made it all harder, not easier."

Valeria was speechless for the first time in recent memory. It couldn't have been a huge set-up like Claude described, could it? In retrospect, it did appear as if everything fit that assumption but... why would anyone do that? Approaching senility though Dumbledore might be, he wouldn't endanger students. Unless... what if he'd wanted the Stone endangered, so as to convince the Flamels of the need to destroy it? And not make a new one as well, while their supplies of Elixir lasted... Nicolas' letter had hinted he could have recreated it but was persuaded not to. Did the Stone pose that much of a threat to the headmaster's worldview? If yes, Valeria had to be very, very careful from now on.

"I... it seems you're right, Claude." she admitted, thinking all events of the past ten months under a new light.

"I'm always right, sis." He claimed pompously. "We get our brains from the same source you and I - and I have a few years on you."

"As if that means anything!" she huffed, crossing her arms. "Everybody knows girls mature much faster than boys."

"Prat!"

"You know what?" she asked as their laughter subsided. "Enough with the heavy stuff, let's do something fun!"

"An excellent idea, sis." He agreed, gathering all his notes. "How about you help me turn your impossible school into a gaming scenario?"

The young blonde witch groaned. It was going to be a long day.

 **...**

"Sit."

It was an order, delivered in a tone that brooked no argument, so Valeria complied. The short but wide-shouldered man with the short black hair, neat beard, and eyes like two pieces of flint stared at her from behind his austere mahogany desk. The room around them, a small library full of old and expensive but unopened tomes, authentic Renaissance paintings, miniature models of machine-assembled DaVinci designs, and a state-of-the art computer station, would press on any visitor with the weight of its age, tradition, sophistication and expense, often putting them on the edge with its utter lack of personality or emotion; an apparently perfect reflection of its owner.

"Explain."

The man, his hard, anvil-like, many-lined face giving the barest hints of anger and distaste, indicated the tomes occupying his desk with a sharp gesture. _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts, A Brief Overview of Modern Wizarding Britain, The Charter of the International Confederation of Wizards, Hogwarts: a History._ Valeria considered carefully how to follow the second order. She'd expected something like this confrontation for over a week now - ever since she'd gifted her questioner those very books. After all, it paid to be on the good side of one's own father.

"It's all true, daddy." she confirmed. "Or as much of the truth as history and political books ever are."

"An international coalition with millions of members all over the world that nobody has ever heard of?" Behind his harsh exterior, Owen Campbell loved his daughter very much. He might not understand the strange gift she called "magic" but he'd fully supported her decision to understand and develop her strange abilities. The small glimpse she'd gifted him with the year before had proven extremely useful after all. But what he did not suffer lightly was foolishness or being made a fool, not even for his princess. He'd considered the matter carefully, did a bit of research and come to the conclusion the number of "wizards" and "witches" couldn't be very high. A few hundred perhaps, certainly no more than a couple thousand. Any more and their movements alone would have caused ripples in society that could be observed; economic and social ones at the very least, even if they entirely avoided public displays of their "magic". No matter how good the conspiracy, the larger the number of members, the more mistakes they would make; the laws of averages and unintended consequences played no favorites. Millions of witches and wizards? Even higher numbers of magical creatures? That his daughter believed him so gullible was infuriating.

"Daddy, I went to school by train." she said, giving him a strange look. It wasn't worry, or anger, or exasperation, or even fear of her hoax being discovered. Whatever it was, he didn't like it much.

"Yes, what of it?" he demanded sharply.

"A six-hundred-mile trip, on uninterrupted train tracks." she continued as if making a point. She didn't give him time to think about it though. "And those train tracks? There were in no map of Britain I could get my hands on. The portion of King's Cross station we departed from? Not only it isn't there on any building plan but if you measure the station's external dimensions, you can't account for it - I checked. Of course, that's not very hard to imagine."

"How so?"

"It's a magical space, like this purse." She pointed at her own pouch hanging from her belt. "If a cheap trinket can fit two hundred pounds of baggage in something that fits in the palm of my hand, what could be done with as much work as a construction company would put in a building?"

Valeria could see her father was having problems coming to terms with what she was saying. That was all right; despite having grown using minor magic as far back as she could remember, she'd needed months in a magical environment to grasp just how extensive magic's capabilities were and she was far younger and less set in her ways than her father. He was trying to rationalize things, trying to fit them in his previous worldview; it was what adults did. Fortunately, she'd come prepared for just that; she opened her purse and took out of it a pewter cauldron, a ceramic cauldron, a thin metal rod, a common copper ring, and a long piece of parchment.

"Here daddy." she said, taking the smallest drop of liquid she could out of the ceramic cauldron and dropping it to her forearm. Wincing a bit at the pain, she saw a fairly impressive boil already growing. "This is a simple corrosive potion; it will melt through dead organic matter and deform the living in seconds. That's a lot faster than natural chemical reactions and nothing mundane would discriminate between living and dead matter like that. And now, watch this." She used the same silver spoon to drip a good dozen drops of the contents of the pewter cauldron on her inflamed and bloated forearm. The swelling subsided rapidly and in about a minute nothing was left behind than unblemished skin.

"Magic can heal in seconds what in our hospitals could take months. But there's a lot more it can do." She wore the ring then, and concentrated. The color-changing charms she'd enchanted it with altered her hair into a soft brown, darkened her skin by several shades and turned her eyes into a dull grey. That done, she took up the metal rod and looked at her gobsmacked father.

"The safe is still behind that professional copy of the Mona Liza, isn't it?" Without waiting for an answer, she walked up to the far wall, pushed the painting aside to reveal the thick metal door and tapped it once with the rod. The most sophisticated lock money could buy for a safe that size clicked open and Valeria now had access to the safe's interior. She helped herself to several bricks of large-denomination notes, promptly disappeared them into her purse, and returned to her seat. "There, robbery managed. I could raid just about any house or business you could name and as long as they were empty I would never be caught. What's the point of cameras and alarms if one can be in and out before security arrives, nobody can find the loot however well they search, and the thief's appearance changes on a whim?" She shrugged, returned the money to her father and passed on the ring and rod as well.

She gave her father a minute to digest the implications, then indicated her tools. "In the wizarding world, these are just parlor tricks. The unlocking and color-changing charms are some of the first we learn as first-years; every wizard knows them. It took me a couple weeks' worth of work to enchant the ring and rod with them and the only reason I did is that the ministry of magic can detect spells near underage wizards but not magic items. The potions were an hour's work each and I'm giving the boil-cure to Claude. Maybe it'll help him get a girlfriend." She finally gave the parchment she was holding to her father.

"This is a list of the core Hogwarts curriculum, the basics as taken from my textbooks in Potions, Transfiguration, Charms and Defense. The good things are towards the end." She nodded at the bottom of the list containing the hundred most common spells and potions taught to British wizards. "Sixth year has a potion that transforms you into someone else for hours, a potion that compels anyone to answer questions truthfully, charms that erase and modify memories, charms that repel specific people, objects or effects according to the caster's intention, how to conjure and vanish objects and animals, a curse that can turn a wall to dust and a shield that can defend from such attacks. Seventh year has charms to turn you invisible, potions that can make people believe you're their best friend or lover, transfiguration that can animate statues to do your bidding or turn people into animals, a blasting curse that could level this house, and enchantments to protect entire buildings or areas."

Owen Campbell was not a stupid man. There was always a chance his daughter was pulling his leg but he doubted it. If eleven year olds were taught skills that would make them a veritable nightmare for normal authorities to deal with, older wizards being capable of what he'd read in the books Valeria had given him was not out of the question. That Grindelwald fellow and his supposed influence on the second world war was what had made him doubt everything in the first place; how could one man have so much power over the world at the time? But if the list of what wizards and witches were taught in that school of theirs was accurate...

"So this secret war really happened?" he asked, flipping through the pages of The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts. "The whole country owe their lives to this Boy-Who-lived fellow?"

"I am not sure." his princess said. "The whole thing is very fishy. The wizard who stopped the previous Dark lord from conquering Europe pretty much by himself? He's our headmaster. He also happens to be the Chancellor in the wizard's parliament, our representative to the International Confederation of Wizards - and its elected leader, not to mention he's widely believed to be the most powerful sorcerer in the world." That same strange look plagued her face and Owen recognized it now - it was remorse. "That's why I've been trying to explain the magic world to you, daddy. There's wars and terrorists and medieval politics on top of the magic; I needed some help to working through everything."

"Don't worry, princess. We'll get to the bottom of this." Owen reassured her but wasn't any more certain of it than she was. He knew war; it was his job, after all. But a war where even civilians could hit as hard as tanks and had unlimited mobility and access to all sorts of tricks... no wonder this Voldemort fellow resorted to terrorism. And the good guys looked like a personality cult to him - the books treated Dumbledore as if he could do no wrong. The whole situation seemed keyed to blow up spectacularly at any moment, taking the whole country with it.

And his daughter was caught in the middle...


	21. Summer visits

**ro781727: Valeria's relatives are smart too. Maybe not prodigies, but they got a lot of experience given their jobs and all the years they have on her. Since muggleborn and muggle-raised students are the protagonists of the story, it makes little sense not to make their influence important. I mean, Hermione knew Harry's issues with his relatives - why not involve her parents or other adults from the muggle side?**

 **everything-is-black-and-white: Thanks! The story should become more interesting as it's progressing as it will break further and further from canon. One such big break is coming up in the following chapter.**

 **whatweareafraidof: You might notice how Valeria is surprised at Ron's strong levitation charm during the Yule snowball fight? Or how she respects his skills in chess? Like everyone else she isn't perfect, and Ron's personality hit a big prejudice of hers, just like Dumbledore's actions did. Not repeating the Troll incident played a part in not fixing their attitude towards each other, too. As the story progresses and they both develop as a character, her opinion of him should change.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, JK Rowling does. If I did, the protagonist would have been female. :)**

"Are you sure it's here dear? I can't see any doors." Melissa hated deceiving her own family but sometimes needs must. She'd heard of the ancient tavern from her grandfather long ago even if she'd never personally visited - it was rather famous in some circles even back on the continent. But that was from a life her family had left behind and she had had no intentions of dragging her precious daughter into it, not even through bedside stories when she were young. But then her little princess had displayed underage magic and her whole world was turned upside-down... again.

"Of course it's there, mum!" Valeria said, pointing at a tiny, broken-down storefront. "The entrance is just covered by both an illusion and a repelling charm keyed to muggles. Not only will anyone or anything without magic see the false image, but they'll also never consider interacting with it, not even if they're children that like exploring abandoned buildings or businessmen that would like to buy and renovate the place."

"I am a muggle, dear. How do you suppose I get inside then?" And here the rampant prejudice of the wizarding world reared its ugly head. Take eleven-year-olds away from their family for ten months a year for seven years, give them magic and miracles only a few years after their parents had to convince them such things did not exist, teach them to use specific words to refer to those without magic, give them powers to specifically employ against nonmagicals, and have them pass their rebellious teenage years in a society that looked down on their parents as inferiors. As a career diplomat, Melissa could grudgingly respect the elaborate subtlety of it all, even as she was horrified at how the whole system was designed to separate kids from their families. No wonder the vast majority of them ended up abandoning their relatives in favor of their new world. She, Owen and Claude were very lucky Valeria showed no hints of going down that road, even if she had adopted the terminology Melissa despised.

"Don't worry mum, I can get us inside. Just hold on to me." And with that her daughter practically dragged her inside. Yet another reversal of familial responsibilities imposed by their vaunted statute of secrecy. If every muggleborn had to guide their parents in all magical places, how could those kids remain respectful of them? Melissa knew how it felt to drag around an invalid, a practical dead weight. All but inevitably, either indifference or neglect would follow.

Oblivious to her mother's worries, Valeria could barely contain her excitement as she led her mother into the half-darkness of the Leaky Cauldron. Tom, the aging proprietor, lifted his bald head as another pair of visitors arrived for the evening and gave the tall, regal blonde and her much shorter and younger escort a critical stare. The older woman's well-fitted grey dress, simple but expensive boots, understated jewelry in silver and sapphires and aristocratic demeanor would fit well in any pureblood house but the hints of apprehension, the purse of the latest muggle fashion and the fact that her daughter led and she followed indicated a muggle parent escorting a first-generation witch. Besides, he'd previously met the younger of the pair when she'd visited his establishment last year, escorted by none other than Minerva McGonagal.

"Greetings, ladies." Tom said pleasantly. "How can I help you?"

"Well met... Tom is it?" the apprehensive mother greeted him in return. "Excuse my manners... nobody would say what a more proper greeting would be."

"No worries, lady." Tom laughed any perceived faux pas off. "Tom I've been for half a century and Tom I shall be till I'm no more." He set the glass he'd been cleaning down and gave the two of them his full attention. "Now, what would you like? Butterbeer for the young lady? Some fortified wine from the continent? Ogden's finest Firewhiskey, perhaps?" The two of them stared at each other for a moment, displaying the wordless communication common among siblings or closely-knit families. Tom got the impression the younger of the two would not be averse to a drink or two but the elder had just put her foot down.

"Something more lasting than a drink, I reckon." the mother said testily as her daughter smiled and gave him a mischievous wink. "We'd like to reserve one of your rooms for the rest of the summer."

"Indeed?" asked Tom. A curious request. The Leaky Cauldron was an inn as well as a pub of course, but few witches or wizards reserved a room for any length of time. Part-human patrons were more numerous, as well as those magicals who were between jobs and looking for employment in Diagon Alley. Muggleborns and muggles were practically unheard-of.

"Yes. You see, my daughter received her Hogwarts letter only a year ago and she's fascinated with the world of magic." The tall woman looked down at the young witch fondly. "She wants to show us everything - practically dragged me here today. And with a whole shopping district with hundreds of shops and magical establishments... you know how girls are." She smiled and her daughter went red in the face from embarrassment. "I expect we'd be going through here every so often all summer long. So I've been thinking; a room here to store any obviously magical purchases we can't take into muggle London, and somewhere owls can get to frequently without drawing attention."

Ah, that made sense. Tom and Mrs Campbell spent a few minutes to make arrangements and she even got him to waive entrance fees to Diagon Alley; reserving a room for six weeks more than covered that and since they wouldn't be needing the usual meals normally included in that price... she was an excellent haggler, for a muggle. After finalizing the agreement and ensuring they could use the pub's own fireplace in case young miss Campbell had to Floo-call or visit friends, the two of them disappeared into the room upstairs.

"That went better than I expected." Melissa commented once the two of them were safe in the privacy of their own room. Tom had assured them the Leaky Cauldron's rooms boasted fairly good privacy and anti-unlocking charms after all. The man had even joked one could hide from dark wizards in his pub, if one so desired.

"I don't think Tom expected a muggle quite like you, mum." Her daughter said with a knowing grin. "And now that we're in a wizard-owned building, in a wizard-populated district with dozens of other witches and wizards within shouting distance at all times..." She drew her wand with an elaborate flourish. "...I can show you everything we were taught in school, no matter what the Ministry might say."

 **...**

 _To miss Valeria Campbell,_

 _Fifth room, second floor, Leaky Cauldron, London._

 _Hello. I hope you're having a happy summer and the like. I know we aren't exactly friends but please hear me out before throwing this letter into the fire, OK? Me and Neville, we've been getting really worried. We've both written Harry several letters over the past two weeks and gotten no reply at all. Our owls return with the letters delivered just fine but not a word from our friend. At first I'd thought Errol was to blame. He's the family owl and quite old - tends to miss letters or fails to deliver occasionally. But then I got word from Neville saying he had the same problem so we thought we'd contact more of Harry's friends and ask them._

 _We don't know what's going on - Dad says he wrote too and will go and check if there's no reply by the end of the month. After our run-in with Quirrel in June I know you're Harry's friend too and you live in London. Harry's aunt and uncle's house in Surrey is, like, twenty miles from there - I looked it up. Maybe you could go check early? If something's up with Harry we'd really like to know._

 _Ron Weasley_

"Typical." Valeria snorted as she passed the letter on to Claude and returned to her work. Enchantment was already hard enough for someone her age; if she didn't focus the cloth would be ruined and twenty hours of enspelling would go to waste. She'd been trying to enchant one of her new robes for the coming year to apply a Featherlight charm on the wearer for nearly a week but only that evening had she felt she was getting somewhere. It had actually been Claude's suggestion, and not only because he wanted to see a new magic item being made. He'd told her, rather reasonably too, that if someone threw her off a window or she fell down a pit trap then would be a bad time to be drawing her wand and trying to cast.

"That's strange." Claude said after he'd read the letter. "One would think wizards would have magical means to check up on someone."

"We do." She confirmed as she pushed the Featherlight charm into the cloth and let it settle, exhaling with relief as the preexisting resizing charms failed to react adversely for once. Maybe she should have tried on mundane cloth instead but she liked how the magical robes fit her too much - vanity had its own price. "Harry lives in a muggle house though. No magical communication methods allowed."

"Seems like an oversight." Her brother let the letter fall on the bed and turned to observe her work. Valeria didn't know what he gained from that; there wasn't visual to observe other than the initial casting... and any mishaps. He'd laughed for fifteen minutes a few days ago when the robe had turned pink, wrapped around her torso and shrunk to fit snugly, trapping both her arms. "Given your recent misadventures, shouldn't adult wizards keep an eye on all of you in case the Dark Wanker turns up again?"

"I'm just a second-year student." she countered, picking the robe up and walking to the improvised changing stall they'd set up in the northern corner. "By the time I learn how the minds of adult wizards actually work, I'll be Grand Sorceress."

"Dream on, little sis." Claude said with a laugh. "Seriously though, I don't get why they can't drop in for a minute and check up on him. This 'Apparition' thing you told me about, all adults can do it, right?"

"Most of them, and no idea. Bet you five pounds in ten-to-one odds it has something to do with Dumbledore though." She patted down her newly enchanted robes as even the lightest breeze lifted them now that they were near-weightless. "I'll go check up on him once I'm done. All that's left is to shift the enchantment around so it applies to the wearer rather than the robes."

"No bet." Her brother gave her a small frown. "Should you be wearing that while still working on it?"

"Second year student here, not master enchantress." She answered with a sigh. "The hands-on approach is all I know. Shouldn't be too difficult - visualization of intent is all it needs." She flicked her wand a few times, drawing the enchantment around. Ignoring the flips her stomach made as its weight shifted unevenly, she visualized the finished product and willed more magic into it. The robe turned crimson red, shrunk two sizes as the resizing charms reacted, and tried to fit anyway. The fabric constricted around her ribs and midriff like a corset, while settling around her chest and hips like a glove. Awesome for her image, not nearly as good for anything else.

"Wow, sis!" Claude exclaimed, trying but failing to refrain from laughing. "You sure you want to replicate 1800s' fashion? Don't get me wrong, boys will love it. But can you actually breathe in it?"

"Shut... up... and help me... get... it... off!"

Naturally, her reply sent him into peals of laughter and she had nearly fainted by the time he deigned to pull the robe off her.

 **...**

"Have you ever heard of seat belts?" She was shouting later that evening into the pimpled face of the eighteen-year-old moron of a conductor for the Knight Bus.

"Nope, I don' fink. Some muggle torture implement, are they?" Yep, terminal intellect decay in evidence. With that and a name like "Stan Shunpike" of course he'd landed that kind of job. A chivalrous guy though; he'd held her hand and kept her hair out of her face while she lost her last meal down Magnolia Crescent. Or maybe he'd had to do the same for every customer of the purple, triple-decker, teleporting, super-fast wizarding vehicle. The only thing that had helped her keep her meal from vacating the premises during the trip was a discussion on how the bus actually worked with the driver, an older wizard named Ernest Prang.

In addition to the animation charms the engine ran on instead of burning fuel, the bus had featherlight charms on the chassis and sticking charms on its wheels to ensure extreme acceleration without being launched off the road the first time it attempted a turn. A special detection charm scanned all of Britain for magicals in need who performed a specific wand gesture so the bus could come and pick them up. Space expansion charms turned outwards bent space in a bubble around it so that every obstacle, from stray animals to muggle houses, appeared to be pushed aside to avoid potential collisions. A mild concealment charm blocked observation unless one had magic or already knew of the Bus' existence and last but not least, a series of portkey enchantments set on a small map of England by the driver's seat allowed the whole bus to instantly jump between a few dozen of predetermined locations all over the country, cutting down travel times significantly. Unsurprisingly, one such location had been preset less than five minutes' walk from Harry Potter's current residence.

"You OK?" Stan asked worriedly when she finally stopped retching. Maybe he'd misjudged him. Note to self: fix the Knight Bus safety features at the earliest opportunity.

"Fine, thanks. I'll be fine from here, I think." She hid her wand back in her pocket but didn't let it go. If something near Harry's house was wrong she wanted to be able to react instantly. And it wasn't the only ace up her sleeve either. Now, if she remembered correctly, Privet Drive was down that end of Magnolia Crescent...

 **...**

Houses, houses, more houses... where were the little shops, historic and civic buildings and everything that gave a neighborhood some character? Urban renewal at its worst; let's turn everything into a carbon-copy of everything else, arrange them into neat rows and columns and sell it all at exorbitant prices. She'd heard her parents complaining about it numerous times and after experiencing the many colors of Diagon Alley or seeing the little villages during her trips on Hogwarts Express she found that she agreed with them.

She found Harry busy mowing the lawn of Number Four, Privet Drive under the summer sun and approached cautiously. Nothing looked wrong at first sight, but appearances could be deceiving. Why, a kid doing that kind of work late Sunday evening when he should be out playing and having fun? The fat boy keeping an eye on him and occasionally throwing a casual insult could be a jailor in disguise, stealing his letters and ensuring the kid kept his head down and didn't cry out against the child labor and abuse his guardians habitually heaped on him. What were the chances, right? Naah, everyone living here must be an upstanding citizen - look how prim and proper their house was! No reason to bother Child Services...

"Somebody else's problem:" of all the ideas Valeria found abhorrent, she hated this one the most.

"Hello there, Harry!" she cheerfully said in greeting as soon as she was within talking distance. "Having fun?"

Harry jumped up and turned around, narrowly avoiding a stumble on his gardening tools. The much larger, obese boy didn't fare as well; he landed his enormous backside on freshly cut grass, messing up his clothes real good.

"Valeria?" the Boy-Who-Lived asked while trying to hide messy clothes and even messier hands. Awkward... "What are you doing here?"

"I live in London, Harry. According to Ron Weasley, that's practically next door." She rolled her eyes and looked from him to larger boy getting to his feet. "Are you Dudley Dursley? Harry has told me a lot of things about you." None of them good but a good girl strove to be polite at all times.

"I... err... yeah?"

"Eloquent too. You must be top of your class." A smart girl on the other hand was polite while insulting the stunted intellect of beached whales anyway. Harry at least got it, if his smirk was any indication. Abandoning all attempts to be presentable on account of futility, he gave her a much wider and sincere smile.

"Why didn't you write, warn me you were coming?" he asked, the tiniest hint of hurt in his voice.

"How would that help, Harry?" she asked, raising one pale eyebrow in question. "It's not as if my other two letters got a reply, let alone the dozen or so each from Neville and Weasley in the past couple of weeks."

"What?!" he exclaimed in utter surprise. "You actually sent me letters? I mean..." his shoulders dropped, his thoughts on the matter evident.

"We're friends, Harry!" she said, crossing her arms in annoyance. "Why wouldn't we?"

"You actually got friends?" Dudley interjected, his confused expression a dead ringer for Crabbe or Goyle during a test. She gave him her best murderous look but it went over his head. "How come you got no letters then?"

"What's going on here, boy?" a much louder voice issued forth from the older, vaster copy of Dudley coming out from inside the house. Great, there came Harry's uncle Vernon, the mugliest muggle in Wizarding Britain. "Why aren't you working? Do you want to be locked up again? And who's the girl?"

"I'm Valeria, sir, pleased to meet you!" she said in false excitement, giving her hand for him to shake. "One of Harry's friends. You know, from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

Vernor Dursley went redder than a tomato, rivaling Ron Weasley's worst moments in color, which should qualify him from some kind of award. The Most-Likely-Imminent-Stroke-Victim one, probably. Puffing up in obvious fury, a small vein pulsing on his forehead, he opened his mouth to say something ugly, insulting, or both. And then promptly closed it without a sound, realizing they were in plain view of half the houses in the street and he was about to make a scene. Pity.

"What the bloody hell is a freak like you doing near my house?" he hissed through gritted teeth, trying to swallow his immediate retort and not draw everyone's attention all the way to Kent.

"Harry wasn't receiving our letters, sir." She replied reasonably. "I dropped in to check up on him just in case he was in trouble. You don't happen to know what happened to Harry's letters, do you?"

"Why should I care how you freaks operate? I barely tolerate him in my house as it is!" A reasonable question, one Valeria was happy to answer completely and truthfully for him.

"Because of the terrorist, sir?" she said earnestly. "You'd want to be careful about him, no?"

"What the bloody hell are you blabbering about?" Vernon Dursley's patience was nearing its end but his interest, or maybe his fear, wouldn't let him kick her off his lawn just yet.

"The wizard terrorist, sir. The one who killed Harry's parents and so many other wizards and nonmagicals a decade ago and wanted to kill Harry too." Despite taunting the Dursleys being rather fun, the reality of the situation wouldn't allow her to be anything but solemn. "He is not dead as most believed, sir. I, Harry and a few friends... we stumbled upon one of his plots about a month ago." She stared at Vernor Dursley's rapidly paling face before continuing. "Didn't anybody warn you about him sir? Didn't Harry tell you anything about his school year? I mean, our friends and I were so worried about the lack of letters because we feared he'd dropped in and killed everyone in this house, or something." At least she did - she wasn't very sure about any of the adult wizards. All this business of sending the Boy-Who-Lived to a muggle house for the summer while he couldn't use magic directly seemed less than safe to her.

The elder Dursley stared at her in silence for well over a minute. Then, coming to a decision, he waved the three of them towards the house. "Let's get inside. And then you're going to tell me everything."


	22. Birthdays

**Son of Whitebeard: Yes, many forget that Vernor ran a successful company. The man was by no means stupid - only fearful of what he didn't understand and more than a little bit racist. In some things he wasn't entirely wrong though; if my own nephew started building his own military-grade flamethrower and chemical weapons who might accidentally blow up the house one day, I might try to suppress his abilities too. Not with child abuse though.**

 **ro781727: I don't think the Dursleys knew that much. A single letter couldn't contain much magical theory, even assuming Dumbledore would have told them about the extra enchantments he cast beyond just the sacrifical protection.**

 **And here we depart from the plot in a substantial way. Let's see how many flames that nets.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, JK Rowling does. If I did, Harry would have researched all the magic he encountered more extensively, even if only for his own protection and safety.**

 **...**

"Happy birthday, Harry!"

The Boy-Who-Lived stared down at the enormous, beautifully-decorated chocolate cake with its twelve merrily burning candles and his vision blurred. His first-ever birthday with another kid at his side giving him gifts rather than insults or beatings was something he'd never expected... and now discovered he'd been waiting for all his life. For a few moments, something wet rolled down his cheeks and he even managed a brief sob until...

"OW!" Harry rubbed his ribs with a wince. "What the hell was that for?" That punch had hurt.

"The Vanquisher of Dark Lords is not allowed to feel sorry for himself or grateful for this pathetic party." Valeria unambiguously stated while cradling her left hand gingerly. There was a reason punching was a boy's job. "Especially not on his birthday, when the entire wizarding world should have been showering him with gifts for delivering them from evil. This?" She pointed at the cake and few gifts from various friends she had delivered in person with lots of help from the Weasleys since someone was still stealing Harry's letters. "It's far less than he's entitled to and not nearly as much as he deserves!"

"Oh come on!" he snorted. "You want me to grow as big a head as Malfoy?"

"That is patently impossible." She raised a pale eyebrow at him and smirked. "But should the unthinkable happen, no worries! The best witch in your year can throw a mean shriking charm and is always willing to help."

"Now who is getting a big head?" The two of them laughed but as soon as she'd calmed down, the blonde Slytherin gave him a serious frown.

"Harry, my father always said one should claim one's successes. Fail to do so, and people either see you as worthless or take you for granted." She looked him in the eye and nodded. "Having met you, I now see what he meant. So make a wish, blow out these candles and forget about big and small heads."

"Yes ma'am!"

The two of them stayed in the half-light of Harry's bedroom for some time until Harry started becoming uncomfortable and felt he had to speak, if only to get a reprieve from the silence.

"So, how did you like the Dursleys?"

"Racist, fearful, brutish excuses of humanity. Why, Harry, I liked them just fine." The young witch said drily. "One only had to explain the situation in terms of their own profit and peril before they decided you should spend the rest of the summer with your friends."

"What? But I thought..." Harry's expression resembled what victims of the Stunning spell must look like. "You helped me cook for them! More than once!"

"So I did." She smirked. "Ever heard of Gregory's Unctuous Unction?"

"The what, now?"

"OWL-level potion. Awfully hard - takes about two weeks to brew." It was also illegal, but Harry didn't need to know that. "I'd been planning to use it on some Slytherins come September, but you needed it more."

"Oh Merlin, you dosed the Dursleys? We're so getting expelled!" His obvious horror at the idea might have been serious if it weren't so cute. "At least tell me what it does!"

"It makes someone your best friend. Why, you expected the Dursleys to agree to everything so easily?" Shaking her head at how naively Gryffindor he was, she explained before he could blow up and do something they'd both regret. "I'm not the diplomat in the family - that's my mom. After their initial shock at the situation, there was no way the two of us could have convinced your uncle of anything. He's not dumb - he's an engineer and company manager after all. He'd have sat down, looked at the problem from every angle, and decided the only solution that ended with his family not getting murdered by dark wizards would have been to throw you out." She thought about it for a moment before adding "Unless it was inviting them in while you slept for a hefty reward."

"But... but we'll still get expelled!"

"Nope! Potions can't be tracked like cast spells. Besides, you're the Boy-Who-Lived. You were involved in an incident where one of your teachers died and the Ministry wasn't involved at all. Why would they bother for mere underage magic? Trust me Harry..." she patted him in the back as she talked over his objections. "...it really is better this way. Don't worry about being abused from the Dursleys from now on. Eat some cake, be happy for once, and go have fun with the Weasleys when they pick you up this evening."

Harry ate some cake and it was good. Neither he nor Valeria noticed a pair of comically large round eyes watching the two of them from the darkness beneath Harry's bed.

 **...**

Greengrass Manor was actually a tower, one of the old Peel towers built along the English and Scottish borders to serve as watch towers where signal fires could be lit by the garrison to warn of approaching danger. It was situated within Northumberland National Park, no more than a stone's throw from Hadrian's Wall and within sight of Kielder Forest. The entire Greengrass estate was hidden behind multiple concealment charms and defensive enchantments and was, according to Daphne, one of the best-defended buildings in Britain. Having been inhabited by an ancient pureblood family serious about its security since at least the 1400s, it would have to be.

The main keep was a single cylindical structure forty yards tall and twenty wide, with a small but thick iron gate and only a small number of openings along its surface that looked more like murder holes and arrow slits than windows. Topped by simple yet sturdy crenellation, it was the very image of functional simplicity and unshakable solidity, all rolled into one. An assortment of smaller buildings had cropped up around it over the years; fairly extensive stables that housed more than just horses, a small barracks now defunct, a still functional smithy, a couple of warehouses, and a large greenhouse where magical plants grew all-year-round.

The tower's interior was similarly utilitarian. Of its twelve levels, seven above and five below the ground, only the first floor was dedicated to and appropriately decorated for the usual pureblood pursuits of formal gatherings, dances, dinners and other social occasions, with the ground floor being an entrance hall, informal gathering place and casual dining room. The second was taken up in its entirety by a massive library, nearly half the size that of Hogwarts'. On the third floor were the guest rooms, twelve in all, lavishly decorated but with nothing extravagant or useless. The fourth and fifth floor were reserved for family members, while the top was part the Lord's study and part war room - and forbidden to visitors of course. Below the ground were the kitchens and house elf quarters, a whole basement dedicated to a dueling ring, the main storeroom and, again forbidden to most visitors, the dungeons and the reliquary.

 _"Furnunculous!"_

 _"Protego!"_

 _"Cantis!"_

 _"Protego!"_

"Stop mollycoddling your sister, lass, before I hex you both within an inch of your lives!" shouted the tall, grizzled wizard with the lined, habitually angry face. "Treating her like a child won't help her survive the dangers you'll both face in the future!"

"Yes, Father." Daphne said, not pointing out that little Astoria was still a ten-year-old girl. The last time she'd brought it up, she couldn't walk for two days. So instead of trying to talk the two of them out of combat practice, she'd started pulling her blows or staying in the defensive. Of course, it had only taken Father half a minute to catch on.

"What are you afraid of? Sending your sister crying in the corner?" Father shouted again from his position as referee. "She'll suffer far worse in the coming war if she's unprepared!" Daphne sighed and started casting low-powered Stinging Hexes again. Astoria dodged them with all the exuberance and boundless energy afforded by youth and retaliated with another Singing Jinx. Her little sister was having fun; that made one of them.

Daphne had shared all details of the previous school year with her parents as soon as she got off the Hogwarts Express. Not even sparing an hour to discuss things, Mother had everyone pick up their personal belongings and then the entire faily had left their house in London behind, in favor of the family's magically fortified ancestral home in the country. Daphne and Astoria had remained inside ever since, only going out to pick up a wand for her little sister's eleventh birthday come November. Astoria wouldn't go to Hogwarts that year - she'd missed the cutoff date by two months - but Father didn't see why she shouldn't start with some early lessons. A former professional duelist, he saw danger in the horizon as much as Mother did and would do everything in his power to see his two girls survive it... including putting them through a ridiculously harsh training regimen at every opportunity.

Naturally, her parents' reaction to her first year's events had changed her mind about inviting Valeria or even Tracey for the summer. As much as Mother saw mudbloods as to far beneath her to bother with in most cases, she could be downright brutal where the safety of the family was concerned. Nobody who had seen Selene Greengrass in action would ever take her lightly and even if she avoided bloodshed (why spoil the carpets?), Father would gleefully perform the deed in her place.

Oh well. Nobody said the road to success would be fun or easy. Though it would have been good to have her two friends at hand. Tracey could be loads of fun and her burning sarcasm was refreshing after all the pureblood niceties. And Valeria... that the muggleborn prodigy could be a friend despite their differences had been more than Daphne had initially expected. Now she couldn't wait to get involved in their schemes, or crack a few jokes with her. Had she even discovered how the Parvati twins were pushing her in their little competition? Daphne wanted to see the smart witch's face when she realized the two of them had split the subjects they studied more between them according to what classes Ravenclaw shared with Slytherin at the time.

But above all else Daphne wanted to have fun with her friends and family so she could forget. Set aside for a time the need to face the future, and what plots against them the fallen Dark Lord was concocting after they'd robbed him of the Philosopher's Stone.

 **...**

"...and that's the list of rare ingredients I'd like to purchase." Valeria said to the aging, stooped man with the oily, white hair and elaborate spectacles. Despite his cold, dimly-lit, off-putting establishment in a corner of this narrow, dirty, dark street, he'd been rather helpful and pleasant so far. "Do you also happen to have any books on Life Alchemy, Soul-Magic and Necromancy?"

"Aren't you a bit too young for those subjects?" Mr. Borgin asked her with his crooked smirk.

"Considering I encountered examples of the first two in my first year of Hogwarts education?" she said, surprising him. "Not at all. And seeing as I'd prefer to survive till graduation at least, a bit of light reading is in order." Her sincerity must have convinced him despite her age, for he disappeared into the nearest wall in search for the items she'd asked for. A similar spell to that of Platform 9 and 3/4, perhaps? One would need some way to conceal his most expensive dark objects from raiding Aurors after all.

While waiting, she examined the various enchanted objects on display all over the little shop. A series of shrunken heads; little more than a curiosity. Silver knives of various sizes enchanted to produce nigh incurable wounds; interesting, but impractical in most fights involving wizards. Jewelry of all shapes that bore curses of various kinds, from inducing hairloss, to enforcing chastity, to inflicting a painful death. Mummified parts of people who'd suffered magically significant deaths and thus could make relevant enchantments stronger - such as the hand of a hanged man offering light only to the owner if made to hold a candle. A strange cabinet of black wood, covered in elaborate runes. Every item in the shop bore dangerous enchantments but to Valeria they all seemed rather... tame for dark magic. Nothing that could kill many people at once, or more efficiently than dark spells of middling power. No major compulsions to kill your friends and family or insanity auras that reduced observers to mindless husks. No unadorned golden rings that held a piece of a Dark Lord's spirit and malice to ensure his continued survival and domination over all life.

Her browsing was interrupted by the opening of the shop's door and the arrival of two people she did not expect to meet, and wanted to encounter even less. The pale, blonde, blue-eyed boy with the upturned nose, black satin robes and disdainful expression on his face she knew and loathed from school, but didn't exactly worry about. The taller, older gentleman in the perfectly tailored black coat, long blonde hair, prideful and confident expression and stride, understated but tasteful and expensive jewelry... he might be a problem. For unless she missed her guess, he was Lucius Malfoy; Draco's father, one of Voldemort's more capable supporters, and a powerful political figure in wizarding Britain.

"Touch nothing, Draco." Mr Malfoy said to his son as he crossed the shop, looking at the various items on display as contemptuously as she had earlier, before ringing the bell on the counter. He failed to notice her outright as she was standing half-hidden behind the black cabinet and gripping her wand until her knuckles turned white - something she was thankful for. She would certainly not like to be cornered by him inside a shop in Knockturn Alley with no other witnesses in the vicinity.

Draco, whom she could no longer see from her position, said, "I thought you were going to buy me a present."

"I said I would buy you a racing broom," said his father, drumming his fingers impatiently at Mr. Borgin's continued absence.

"What's the good of that if I'm not on the House team?" said Draco in his usual sulk and bad-temper. "Harry Potter got accepted as a reserve Seeker last year. Bet he plays in the standard position this year - the Gryffindorks are so proud of him. He's not even very good... if it weren't for his stupid scar..."

"You have been pestering me about him all Summer," said Mr. Malfoy, quelling his son with a sharp gesture. "Him and that mudblood girl." Valeria bristled at the insult but didn't interrupt. "It is far from wise to oppose Potter, who many of our kind see as a savior for vanquishing the Dark Lord. Your energies would be better spent putting the mudblood in her place."

"How can I?" Draco whined. "She somehow managed to find supporters - in our own House! What could the other Slytherins possibly see in her!"

"Perhaps it's her grades." Malfoy senior said snidely. "Unfortunately, talent can sometimes be found in the unlikeliest of places... or lacking where it should exist. Are you not ashamed that a girl of no wizard family beat you in every exam?" he snapped.

Valeria smirked. She couldn't see Draco still but she could well imagine his chargin, anger and shame. Especially after their latest confrontation. Unless... Did the so-called prince of Slytherin share the truth of their encounter with daddy dearest or did he provide a... jaundiced account?

"Mr. Borgin, finally!" Mr. Malfoy greeted the aging wizard as he came out of the enchanted wall with a small pile of books in his arms. "I have some... business with you."

"Perhaps you would wait for your turn, Lord Malfoy?" she said as she came from behind the cabinet after casting a couple of spells in a barely audible whisper. "Interrupting another customer isn't very polite." Draco jumped at her sudden appearrance and, especially, at her ready wand. His father showed no reaction except for a calculating stare and a pale eyebrow raised in question. Did it mean anything, that the two of them had identical expressions of mock interest?

"You!" Draco spat angrily upon recognizing her. "What are you doing here?"

"Purchasing books in subjects of interest," she replied, barely sparing a glance for her in-House rival. Her attention was all on the elder Malfoy, and her contingency for getting out of the shop alive if things turned ugly. "Though I don't see how it's your business, after certain events this past June I decided I should be more informed of certain aspects of magic."

"Draco, who is the young lady?" Malfoy senior asked, still measuring her with his eyes.

"She is... err... the muggleborn I was talking about, Father." Draco said awkwardly and she smirked.

"Indeed?" she said. "That was not quite the terminology I overheard. But no matter." She shrugged. "After the events of last June, your opinion is less relevant than it was."

"What events would those be?" The elder Malfoy asked in a deceptively soft tone. Valeria considered her options. On one hand, Malfoy was very dangerous. On the other, she really wanted those books. And there were more people than Draco that had annoyed her this past year.

"It was the evening of June 4th, a bit over two months ago, when a teacher attempted to steal an object Dumbledore had hidden in the school." She said, watching as both Lord Malfoy's and Mr. Borgin's expressions changed from mild contempt and slimy servitude respectively and into curiosity and avid attention. So Dumbledore had covered up the incident after all. Curious. How would one go about preventing the rumors of those events from spreading after all but announcing what had happened during the Leaving Feast?

"Mr Potter and I happened upon the scene as the theft was in progress and decided to intervene. I was forced to destroy the item to prevent it from falling into... unsavoury hands while Mr. Potter burned the thief during a brief struggle until the thief perished." Lucius Malfoy hissed in surprise at that. Hopefully he had no magical way to discover all the lies and ommissions in her story. "Upon the thief's fall a wraithlike spirit came out of the body, tried to kill us both for preventing... it from regaining a physical body, and fled only as Dumbledore arrived." Inwardly, she smirked. Let Malfoy senior stew on that information. He was smart enough to fill in the things she'd pretended to be ignorant of and, from what she'd read, lose a few nights of sleep over them.

"So you see why my interest in Life Alchemy and Soul Magic." Leaving the two Malfoys momentarily stunned at the revelation, she paid for her books and left before they could hold her up for further interrogation and less pleasant things. She still had many things to do before her birthday next week.

 **...**

Valeria sat in her bed late at night in the twelfth of August, considering the few gifts still unopened. Mother had thrown one of her rare patries and she, Valeria and Claude had eaten, danced and had fun for hours. Father was away on business once more an she probably wouldn't see him till next year, with all the months she had to spend at Hogwarts. Not that she regretted it at all; she was learning the mysteries of magic and had even made a few friends.

Speaking of friends, she considered the gifts again. A large bag of wizarding sweets from the Weasleys - probably for her help in contacting Harry, a magical prank kit from Tracey, her own deck of Exploding Snap cards from Harry. A book of intermediate dueling spells; definitely from Daphne, that one. There was even a small potted plant that didn't look like anything she'd ever seen before, with a card from Neville. So who had sent her the small, thin, odd black book?

Bound in leather but not especially elaborate, it bore the mark of a muggle bookstore and its binding was obviously the result of modern industry, not like the ancient tomes and grimoires wizards used. It was also empty though, every page blank. Sighing, she retrieved her dictaquill; might as well use the thing as a diary. Claude had been nagging her for more detailed accounts of her magical adventures after all.

 _"This diary is the property of Valeria Campbell"_ she had the pen write on the first page. If someone saw the warning and read on anyway... well, they wouldn't be able to claim ignorance when she was hitting them with various hexes for violating her privacy. She was about to start writing down impressions of her twelfth birthday when the message vanished and she jumped up in surprise - the book was magical! And if that pleasant discovery renewed her interest, it was nothing next to what followed... for someone wrote back.

 _"Hello Valeria Campbell. My name is Tom Riddle."_


	23. Twin Terrors

**whatweareafraidof: Harry didn't have to hurt anyone. Petunia knew some of what magic could do because Lily often broke the restrictions on underage sorcery to show off. If you know a kid is going to grow up and start making flamethrowers, explosives and bioweapons, it is probably the responsible thing to try and prevent it. Especially if you once wanted your own bioweapons but found out you didn't have the talent.**

 **ro781727: Yep, that's why the diary got sent where it was. Some people do not appreciate being frightened.**

 **Serpentine13: It is, isn't it? Thoughtful does not mean benevolent after all - you can thoughtfully plot someone's grizly murder just fine. Many people do it.**

 **lightning king: Crafting a Horcrux isn't hard for the basic spell. The difficulty comes from needing to lay enchantments that protect the Horcrux from everything but Fiendfyre or Basilisk venom, and permanently at that. Not every wizard can do that step. And secondly, for the intent-based part of the magic, you need to perform a sufficiently horrendous act whose mention alone can make people puke - and do it without shred of remorse. But yes, there are other bits of soul-magic just as hard or harder. As for Valeria and the diary, wait and see.**

 **JohnyS: Everybody makes mistakes - sharing information only to brag about it or frighten others is one of them. As for Tom's tutelage, see below.**

 **Urazz: She might keep writing in the book. That doesn't mean she has to write in the book at all though, does it?**

 **Plumbum is latin for lead. I am going for seven "fundamental laws" regarding the mysteries and limits of magic, for the magical significance. Life, Soul, Mind, Value, Form, Time and Power. Three are definitely canon, one is iffy, the other three are fanon. As for runes, there must be a reason such a relatively young language is used as basis for the magical subject.**

 **...**

If in the near future looms something you wish to avoid, time seems to advance by leaps and bounds - much like a caffeinnated squirrel under a featherlight charm. When on the other hand there are events you still are waiting to experience, the days, hours, even minutes seem to extend on and on until, in the inimitable words of a certain Hobbit, you feel like butter stretched over too much bread. The last days of August had felt exactly like this to a young, blonde, Slytherin witch.

 _"Are we there yet?"_

"Of course not." She said with an amused smile, not bothering to act the character her words belonged to. Dictaquills didn't transcribe expressions, not even those as expensive as hers. "I've only just boarded this crimson eyesore of a muggle contraption and the trip will take hours. It's ridiculous. The school ought to set up arrivals via Floo and rid us of the useless delay."

 _"They have to deal with the mudbloods, my dear."_ Riddle replied in false sympathy. _"Perhaps a good book would make the hours pass swiftly? You found Adalbert Waffling's writings fascinating, didn't you?"_

"Because ambivalent theories with no practical application are so very useful?" Yes they were. The Source of Life, the Essence of Self, the Seat of Thought, the Perception of Value... four out of seven of Waffling's theories had to do with the magics she was researching and while Riddle disliked the man, she would not disregard the dire warnings of a renown magical theorist on his say-so. "Oh wait... you're teasing again, aren't you?"

 _"Why not? Fun is important to a fourteen-year-old girl's health."_

"I prefer runes, thank you. Can't you explain why Futhark runes are superior to Egyptian hieroglyphs or Sumerian cuneiform?" Valeria had been trying to reflect a whiny tone in their discussions of late. Ever since her full knowledge of revealing magics failed to analyze the diary's enchantments (all of two spells - she was only twelve), caution was the order of the day. Her unseen correspondent was clever and tried for friendly but sending her anything magical namelessly had been a mistake. It probably had been a matter of ego. An aspect of his Valeria had decided to feed, which already yielded good results.

 _"Greedy for knowledge, are we? But who am I to dissuade you?"_ She could almost hear the chuckle that would have followed the words, nearly see the oily smirk. _"Futhark is an alphabet. Unlike pictograms of ancient times where each symbol had a single complex meaning, letters form complex meanings when combined, and the number of possible combinations far exceeds the number of letters in older written languages. Where Egyptians and Sumerians could infuse their writings with existing intent-based magic, only with younger languages could one form new magic by writing out his intent in detail. As for why Futhark runes and not Greek or Roman script? Because the individual runes also have meanings beyond their combination, each with multiple potential meanings according to the writer's intent. That added a level of complexity previously unheard of. You see, for all they're called 'Ancient Runes', runic magic is no older than wand magic - merely too complex for many to learn and too slow for most to bother."_

Yep, called it: Riddle liked to hear his own voice. He was probably using a Dictaquill as well, wherever he was sending his messages from. And that was why Valeria couldn't wait to return to Howarts. She had need of its vast library to find better revealing spells and the opportunity to practice them before she could uncover everything there was to know about her new diary. Until then, she'd make sure she always gave a total stranger false personal information, she'd never write in the diary with her own hands, and try her best not to let Riddle realize she was totally playing him.

And milk him for every bit of new magic he could teach her, of course.

 **...**

As the Hogwarts Express left London behind, Valeria's hopes that Daphne and Tracey would join her for the trip were dashed. She was about to go and look for them when the door to her compartment opened and Neville charged in as bravely as he'd gone after the Philosopher's Stone last year.

"Hey there Val," he greeted her and her cheeks went a bit pink at his use of that affectionate nickname. "Have you seen Harry or Ron? I can't find them anywhere!"

"I... I d-don't know where they are!" she replied, totally embarassed. He'd come to her for help and she'd totally failed him. Would their relationship be damaged? Should she make amends? She could try to help him anyway... she knew lots of spells. Maybe if he succeeded with her help he'd come to her more often? Her face went red at that thought and only with great effort did she refrain from squealing out loud. Squealing was undignified - as a pureblood scion raised to value good manners, Neville might be offended by such an outburst.

"Oh, OK." The tall, wide-shouldered blond boy said with a frown. "If you haven't seen them... this is the last compartment. They must not be on the train... did something happen to them?"

Who cared about Potter and Weasley? The latter was an ambulatory mouth that only vomited out idiotic ramblings when not busy gulping down everything remotely edible within reach, while the former was a so-called hero too lazy to try to improve himself and too blindly worshipping moral authority to bother making his own decisions. But Neville liked them, didn't he?

"Don't worry, Neville, I'm sure they are fine. Ron's parents will find them in quickly enough - adult wizards can Apparate long distances in an instant and use lots of detection and locator charms. Missing the train shouldn't be a problem either; a letter to Dumbledore with Harry's owl and they'll be Flooed to the castle before we even arrive." She then hugged the boy to comfort him, allay his worries. And to hide her even more furiously blushing face... was the room suddenly warmer?

"Right, ah, Valeria. Thanks for the help." Neville awkwardly pushed her off and she let him. Better not seem too clingy just yet. "I... ah... will be leaving now." He exited her compartment a bit hastily and her stomach clenched painfully at the possibility of having embarassed him into abandoning her. What had she done wrong?

She fell back in her seat dejectedly, staring at nothing. Only her shaking hands, clenched into fists, came into focus. How could she get Neville to see her again? Get close once more? Maybe Tom knew something... No, no, the smug bastard would simply laugh at her just for asking. What spells did she know? Could one of them help in her situation and if not, why had she learned them? Maybe a potion? Yes, that was it.

With still-shaking hands she searched frantically into the potions compartment of her trunk, going through the potions she'd brewed over Summer. Forgetfulness Potion? If only she could make him forget just his other relationships... but the potion wasn't selective like that, or worked that far back in time either. Wit-Sharpening Potion? Could she make Neville think more clearly, recognize their growing relationship? Maybe she could drink it herself, to better focus on her plans for him? She reached for it with trembling hands but at the last moment she reconsidered. Thoughts going a mile a minute, she frowned at Gregory's Unctuous Unction... no, definitely not. That would only make him her best friend. What was wrong with her? How could she possibly be thinking of messing with Neville's mind like that? Before she could change her mind again, she reached for one of the reagents she'd bought in her last trip in Knockturn Alley and swallowed it.

And suddenly everything was so much clearer.

 **...**

"Have you seen Fred and George?" she asked Alicia Spinnet, an older Gryffindor girl. Her hands were still shaking now, if from a different reason. It took considerable effort to refrain from making demands at wandpoint.

"They're two carriages ahead, feeding Lee Jordan's pet acromantula swelling solutions to see if they can induce permanent growth." The dark-skinned witch said with an air of distaste. "Why, do you need them for anything?"

"None of your business." Valeria replied curtly and closed the compartment door not quite hard enough to break. 'Oh Merlin, what did they do now?' she heard the Gryffindor girl ask rhetorically but didn't stay to elaborate. She had a mission to complete and she was going to thoroughly enjoy it.

Her behavior with Neville had not struck her as odd, not consciously. From the direction of her thoughts though, the conflicting emotions, her shaking hands, she must have subconsciously known something had been very wrong with her obsessing after an eleven-year-old boy... especially when she was still only twelve herself. She'd been rather lucky; whoever the brewer had been, they hadn't done a very good job of it. It was the only explanation of how she'd managed to use the Bezoar despite being under the influence of a powerful compulsion.

"OUT!" She ordered Lee Jordan and Death Thomas as soon as she kicked their and the Twins' compartment door open. Wisely, they complied.

"Why the bloody hell did you two menaces think it a good idea to feed me a love potion?" she hissed furiously as soon as the three of them had a bit of privacy.

"It worked?" Fred asked with a smile from ear to ear. "I didn't think it would - altering it to work on September the 1st was so complicated. Fun though."

 _"Plumbogravitas!"_

The grinning idiot collapsed on the floor under several times his own weight as she turned her wand to his idiot brother. "That" she spat angrily "was the wrong answer. Care to try again?"

"We wanted to test our newest creation!" George said, flinching back from her fury. "You and Ron, we saw you arguing like a married couple last year. Would have been perfect if he suddenly had a crush on you, but mum is too good at finding out about mischief so we couldn't give it to him." He tried to smile again at her but his grin melted away like a snowall in the fires of Hell upon considering her expression. "You oviously got out of it soon enough so no harm no foul, right?"

"Ron's not on the train, imbeciles." She fixed the Twins with her best glower yet. "You fed me a potion that couldn't work as you intended, no matter what the magic did. Do you know how dangerous that is?"

"Ickle Ronniekins isn't on the train?" George asked, aghast. trust a ginger to fixate on entirely the wrong thing. Points for the effort though; modifying a potion like that couldn't have been easy.

"No he isn't. Neville was looking for both him and Harry." She gritted her teeth and lowered her wand, refusing the temptation to burn a couple of faces off their owners. "Guess who the potion had me crushing after, instead? And it was all wrong; love potions don't make you irrational and paranoid, they don't twist your personality until you're about to lobotomize your friends."

"Blimey, Val, we're sor..."

"Don't ever use that nickname again!" Sparks flew out of her wand, sizzling against the floor. If she weren't careful she might incinerate the entire compartment, the likelihood of that outcome being inversely proportional to the fondness she felt for the occupants. "Don't ever test anything experimental on a student without having tried it on yourselves. If you do, I'll make sure you're permanently stuck as half-donkeys half-humans for the rest of your miserable lives!"

 **...**

The walk back to her compartment was soothing. She only had to hex five Slytherin mudblood-haters on her way back before she'd calmed down enough to be presentable. That one of them had been the 5th year male Slytherin perfect had only been a bonus. Naturally, more problems presented themselves at the earlier opportunity.

"We don't want you here, this is our place." Two girls said in unison from inside the compartment.

"B-but why?" A boy's voice asked, hurt by the rejection.

"Waving around that muggle contraption..."

"Being annoyingly inquisitive..."

"Possessing enough perkiness for an entire Quidditch team..."

"Having an awful fashion sense..."

Mildly amused, Valeria barged in before things could deteriorate any further. She found a tiny boy in muggle clothes clutching a huge, old-fashioned muggle camera protectively, while two identical girls in simple but expensive green robes, silver jewelry and black everything else gave him The Look. Typical - she'd only just escaped from one set of twins only to happen upon another.

"What, exactly, is going on here?" she demanded, putting as much authority into her words as she could. Her expression mimicked Mother's after she'd caught Claude doing something idiotic for the sheer fun of it. When in doubt, always go with the classics.

"This... boy is annoying us." Slytherin-twin on the right said after checking the color of Valeria's robes.

"He's being invasive and stuff." Slytherin-twin on the left said, pointing at the huge camera.

"And you?" She asked the boy. "What have you to say for yourself?"

"N-nothing ma'am!" He smiled tentatively. "Just taking some pictures, is all."

"And some people may not like having their picture taken." She said as she closed the compartment door.

"But... why?" He was obviously confused, unable to comprehend that idea.

"That's for them to know." She stated firmly. "People are allowed not to like things, just like you wouldn't like the roach pizza some people eat in China. Yes, it does come with live roaches."

"Ewww..." the twin girls informed her of their opinion in unison. The boy had a thoughtful expression on his face.

"What do you want to do in Hogwarts?" she asked him as she sat down, setting up the stage for the rest of this little scene.

"I want to learn everything!" the boy exclaimed excitedly, his previously suppressed eagerness exploding like an area Cheering Charm.

"Excellent! You would do well in Ravenclaw, house of the wise and learned."

"But..." he bit his lower lip. "Harry Potter is in Gryffindor, isn't he?"

"Do you want to learn everything or do you want to be around Harry Potter?" She smirked. "Doing the latter won't help you with the former much. Harry isn't the bookish, inquisitive sort."

"But he's Harry Potter!" the boy stated with all the conviction of a brainwashed fanatic. Oh Morgana, Harry was going to get a minion... should be hilarious.

"Even the Boy-Who-Lived can't do or be everything." Valeria said for everyone's benefit. "I should know; I'm scoring higher than him in most subjects." Then she turned towards the girls while the boy digested her words.

"How about you. What do you want to do in Hogwarts?"

"Get sorted into Slytherin..."

"...make our families proud..."

"...be good at potions..."

"...learn a bit of Dark Magic..."

She groaned. Merlin, they even finished each other's sentences, like Fred and George. This year ought to be interesting - though after the Philosopher's Stone incident, she could do without interesting for a bit. Maybe she could prevent the horror of another potential pair of pranksters by feeding the older Twins some love potion keyed to the younger twins? Ought to be funny, in a peculiar sort of way... Naah. The Twin Terrors were too horrible to be inflicted on anyone.

"I'm Valeria Campbell, Slytherin second year." She said, greeting them properly.

"I'm Colin." The boy excitedly shouted. "Colin Creevey."

"I'm Flora" said the girl on the left. "I'm Hestia" said the girl on the right. "We're the Carrow twins!" they both sung in unison.

Carrow? Hmm... weren't the Carrows Death Eaters?


	24. All in the Mind

**Pac: Valeria uses what works in her duels. When almost any spell can take somebody out, being good enough in few spells to outlast and outpower opponents with them can work better than spreading your efforts with more variety. Also, this story relies in canon magic and realistic learning speed for the practical part. Valeria is learning new magic at a rate of one effect per week or so, meaning she could know about seventy of them by now. But mastering spells and potions beyond her level would take additional time, learning to do them silently, as enchantments or under combat conditions even longer.**

 **Regarding enchantment, most enchanted objects - protections on buildings included - canonically don't require runes because they replicate existing charms. It is when you're trying for effects mere charms can't cover (such as a Pensieve, or the Vanishing Cabinet) or when you get into some ancient tomb enspelled before the advent of modern enchantments that runes come into play. Even the Time-Turners are canonically enchanted with the Hour-Reversal Charm to stabilize and limit it, not runes. (when freely cast, assuming you can manage it, the charm can take you back centuries but also causes paradox).**

 **Disclaimer: Harry Potter sprung from the mind of JK Rowling, like Athena did from Zeus'. In no way can I and my humble work be compared to them.**

 **...**

Contrary to initial impressions, the Carrow twins were both quiet and talented. Instead of talking about politics or their families, they'd settled down and started rehearsing the more difficult materials in the First-year curriculum, especially potions. Valeria suspected their being twins from a dark family had a lot to do with it; their only trusted company being each other and their only allowed escape being the study of magic must have molded their characters. Creevey on the other hand could not stop being supremely annoying. He'd talk incessantly about everything, from Hogwarts uniforms to the Boy-Who-Lived, who seemed to be his favorite subject. In the end she'd left to search the train again for her missing friends, leaving the compartment door locked behind her. Unfortunately, Harry, Ron, Daphne and Tracey were nowhere to be found and no-one knew anything about their absence.

As soon as they'd arrived at Hogsmeade station, she took one look at the school carriages and what drew them, got out her wand and left them behind. Thestrals were easy to recognize if one could see them, but however fast they might be in flight school policy would not wish to upset the students... and speed was more important than safety just then. A Featherlight charm later and she was bounding towards the castle in thirty-foot leaps.

"What tha?" Filtch the caretaker was obviously not ready for students doing two-minute miles. Ignoring his gobsmacked expression, she cast a quick _Scourgify_ to get rid of the mud on her boots and a drying charm on her drenched hair. No need to do her robes; they were waterproof and self-cleaning.

"No time..." she huffed, catching her breath. "Where's Professor Snape?" If anything, her request left the caretaker even more off-balance. Thanking him for the directions, she ran all the way to the staff room.

"What's the meaning of this, Campbell?" Her Head of House demanded as soon as she'd barged in, the other teacher present giving her a fierce glower as well. McGonagal was there - perfect.

"Sorry for the surprise entry, Professors, but I was worried. My friends did not appear on the train."

"Allow me to allay your misplaced concern, Campbell." Professor Snape stated in his usual pomp. "Miss Davis and miss Greengrass will be arriving later tonight through alternate travel arrangements. Their families decided that their spending six hours on a train without adult supervision would be less than secure." He snorted. "Such common sense came as a total surprise to me as well, I assure you. Unlike you however, I refrained from ignoring school policy to announce that one fact. So there is now the matter of your punishment to decide."

"I meant Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, Professor!" she interrupted him from setting a new record by giving her a week's worth of detentions before the school year officially started. "They weren't on the train either, and given the events of last June..."

"Say no more miss Campbell. Twenty points to Slytherin for your early warning." Professor McGonagal literally jumped into action, only to deflate a second later when a problem came up. "Oh no, the Sorting! It will be starting in a few minutes and I have to be there. Severus, can you handle it? Dumbledore is still in that meeting."

"Naturally, Minerva." Professor Snape confirmed in his ominous tone. Valeria wasn't fooled though; she'd seen the brief smile and its presence on her dour Head of House's face, if anything, worried her even more. Professor McGonagal left in search of the Sorting Hat after that but the Potions Master just stared at her. If she hadn't faced horrendous dangers the year before, she'd already be fidgeting.

"How did you come here so quickly, miss Campbell?" he asked her, his piercing stare seemingly digging into her very self to pry her thoughts apart and uncover her secrets. "Apparating within the boundaries of this castle is impossible, and you're too young for that in any case."

"On foot, sir." She frowned. Something about their conversation seemed familiar.

"Really?" His unblinking eyes seemed to bore into her own even more intently and she felt a sharp jab of pain. "You outdistanced the school carriages on foot? Impressive."

"It's amazing how fast one can run when worrying for one's friends and under the effects of a featherlight charm, sir." Why did everything about this interrogation seem so familiar? What was she missing?

"I see..." Professor Snape silently watched her for over a minute before coming to a decision. "There will be no punishments this time, miss Campbell. And ten points to Slytherin... for inventive use of magic."

 **...**

Missing the Sorting wasn't that important in Valeria's book, but the Welcoming Feast was another matter. Needs must however so she'd scrambled to the second-year Slytherin dormitories where her trunk would be magically relocated... only to remember she'd not yet learned the password. Not to be daunted, she took out her wand and rapped it hard against the wall.

 _"Specialis Revelio!"_

The magic-revealing charm was a favorite of enchanters and curse-breakers all over the world for its ability to make visible to the caster the charms and curses cast upon objects and people, be they spells or more lasting enchantments. As Valeria had discovered though, it had two weaknesses. The first was that it didn't work on transfiguration. The second and more important was that it would only reveal magic if it were less powerful than itself. She must have used it thousands of times over the past couple of weeks, repeatedly casting it on Riddle's Diary to exhaustion. The artifact's enchantments had outlasted her stubbornness though, only giving up minor hints of mind magic around it.

Thus her total surprise when a web of magic appeared in her mind within the structure of the hidden door to the Slytherin common room. What the hell? The protections on the very door to her House were weaker than those on a silly remote communication book? While not complete by any means, the ebbs and flows of magic in the door did reveal the surface enchantments; it took her only a minute to discover the password, and five more how to change it. Now if she could get her hands on a Prefect's badge... but that was for another day.

After the surprises of the past few hours, the half-dozen or so tiny humanoids prowling around her dormitory with dusters, clean bedsheets or carrying students' trunks barely registered. Their high-pitched scream and abrupt disappearance upon her arrival might have been jarring too, if she'd not read about house elves before. Shrugging off the standard Hogwarts weirdness, she reached for her own trunk, took out the bag of cosmetics, and retrieved the bottle of pink nail polish. Using tweezers and a lot of care, she took out the four tiny rectangular objects suspended in the liquid, picked the one she needed and put the rest back in the bottle. A tap of her wand cancelled the shrinking charm on her manual of mind magic and she flipped the pages to the chapter of Legilimency. A few minutes later, she'd confirmed her suspicions, re-shrunk the book and returned it to its hiding place. The _Impervius_ charm on it ensured the nail polish would not ruin it and who would ever think to look for illegal books inside a girl's cosmetics?

Valeria fled the Slytherin common room and ran towards the Owlery. The letters she had to send would have to be written by hand, and with her eyes closed. Occlumency was now her highest priority but until she could develop it sufficiently, relying on the weaknesses of Legilimency and Memory Extraction would have to do. Strong emotions were the easiest for a mind-invader to reveal, followed by visual images and sounds. But something as complex and exacting as the hand movements of writing a specific letter without looking at it? Unless they used Veritaserum or the Imperius Curse to force her to reveal the contents, she would be safe... hopefully.

As the owls flew off towards London, she slowly descended the stairs to the dungeons once more, wondering how she could turn Professor Snape's illegal practices to her advantage...

 **...**

"You do realize how silly that decision was, don't you?" Valeria asked Harry as their little group of friends marched towards Greenhouse Three. Daphne and Tracey were still not talking to her - they'd been avoiding her since their arrival via Floo right after the Welcoming Feast - so she had decided to grill Harry and Ron on their latest idiocy instead. She hoped her Slytherin friends would open up soon enough but she wouldn't press them; given last year's events and their kind of family, she could only imagine how their summer had been.

"Snape, McGonagal and my mum already punished us, Campbell." Ron Weasley glowered at her. "No need for you to hound us too."

"On the contrary, there's every reason." She took out the evening edition of the Daily Prophet of September the 1st and shoved it at Ron's face. "Flying car, on your own, over half the country. Suppose a dark wizard realized what was going on, got on his broom and blew you out of the sky? Do you even know how many of them would love to see you get renamed into The-Boy-Who-Died-Stupidly and Our-Savior's-Killer? Do you?"

"Oh come on!" The annoying redhead protested. "How would they even know that was us?"

"Oh I don't know, maybe because they planned it?" She said sarcastically as they finally arrived at the Greenhouses. "Someone did steal Harry's letters and did stop you from getting to the Hogwarts Express, didn't they?" Further conversation was interrupted by a very annoyed and no-nonsense Professor Sprout ordering the joint Slytherin-Gryffindor second year inside while glowering balefully at the new Defense Professor.

Gilderoy Lockhart confused Valeria. He was dashingly handsome, dressed impeccably - if in a bit weird colors, strutted around with the confidence and poise obtained only through success, and was rather famous. On the other hand, his books read more like fantasy novels than true accounts of a wizard's accomplishments. After facing several terrifying situations, she'd never see anything humorous about real danger again. That Lockhart did meant he was either psychotic, or something suspicious was going on.

"OK class, who can tell me anything about Mandrakes?" Professor Sprout asked as the class took positions next to a line of small pots full of small, unassuming plants. Valeria smirked; she'd been waiting for this lesson ever since she'd read the second-year Herbology textbook. Since she'd planned her fun for the lesson's end, she elbowed Neville, urging him to answer despite his timidity. After his winning ten points for Gryffindor, the class worked for some time repotting the ugly, lethal, animated plants with the fetus-like moving roots. Once they were done, Valeria raised her hand.

"Yes, miss Campbell?" the Herbology Professor asked cheerfully. Working with her beloved plants always seemed to cheer and excite her. Valeria couldn't fault her this; they had great potential.

"Are these earplugs magical?" she asked, indicating the fuzzy pink pair Professor Sprout had been using. "With non-magical equivalents we'd have still heard the mandrakes scream through our bodies."

"Indeed they are, miss Campbell. Ten points to Slytherin for being observant." The aging, plump witch looked at the rest of the class. "As noted a physical block such as normal earplugs, or putting one's hands over one's ears, is not enough to completely block sounds. Using the Silencing Charm, the Noise-Filtering Charm or objects enchanted with one or the other is the only certain defense. This is especially important when working with mandrakes - but also when having to face Lamias or Banshees, or when being assaulted with sound-based magic." The whole class started whispering at that, especially her fellow Slytherins. Professor Sprout seemed rather pleased at the renewed attention so Valeria moved to the next question.

"Professor, can anyone work with or get to mandrakes?" She pointed at the innocent-looking plants in their new pots. "They are rather dangerous."

"Not to worry, miss Campbell." The Professor waved her worries aside. "They are non-tradeable commodities in the wizarding world for precisely that reason, with only those with a mastery in Herbology being allowed to procure or raise them - not that anyone less capable could handle the more delicate parts of the work."

"But is this greenhouse secure?" Valeria played up her worry. It was not exactly feigned, given how dangerous the plants were, but the rest of the class didn't seem to realize that. Lack of security in the wizarding world had angered and amused her in turns over the past year, but not with something this serious. "I mean... what if someone tied a mandrake to a bludger and let it loose in the Great Hall? Or in the middle of a muggle city?"

Suddenly the entire class was no longer laughing. Some of the Gryffindors were staring at her in horror, while the Slytherins looked on with serious interest. Professor Sprout dismissed them all a good ten minutes early and Valeria could see her casting new protective spells on each and every plant and glass panel even as the students left...

 **...**

"Harry..." she asked through gritted teeth a couple of days after the mandrake incident "...can I borrow your invisibility cloak?"

"No." The Gryffindor boy said. "I'd rather face Voldemort again than you armed with whatever you'd steal from Sprout or Snape."

"Oh ye of little faith." She said and laughed. No need to steal when one had profitable arrangements with people in Knockturn Alley. "No, I want it for Lockhart." That name alone had her nails digging into her palms as she resisted the urge to draw her wand, march up to Lockhart's office and burn it to the ground.

"You had him too, huh?" Harry frowned. "Guy's a fraud, you know that right? You don't want to follow him invisibly around to ogle him, or something?"

"Harry Potter! If you weren't my friend I'd be hexing you to within an inch of your life for that accusation." She literally growled at him. "You know how serious I am about learning. A professor that teaches nothing is... is an abomination!"

"OK, OK, I'm sorry." He looked left and right to ensure nobody would overhear them, something she'd already done. Point for the belated effort though. "If I give you the cloak you'll just prank him, right? Nothing truly harmful? I don't want to be expelled."

"You won't be expelled, Harry." She smiled. "And maybe I can help you too - did you know that half of Slytherin is doing renditions of what Lockhart puts you through?"

It only took a little bit more cajoling and evasiveness to secure use of the Cloak for a night without giving any promises.

 **...**

Valeria now knew why Harry was reluctant to part with the Cloak: wandering invisibly through the castle gave her an exhilarating sense of freedom. Avoiding Prefects, Professors and portraits, she made good time to Lockhart's office. Looking through the keyhole, she saw the Defense Professor up late, reading through a large stack of letters. Fanmail, no doubt.

As slowly and silently as she could, she tried opening the door. Finding it locked, she whispered the basic unlocking charm; success. She slipped inside under the cover of the Cloak and crawled closer to Lockhart's seat.

 _"Petrificus Totalus!"_

The silly blond man noticed the Full-Body Bind, but by then it was too late. All his limbs were struck immobile, his own body becoming his prison. If it had been any other adult wizard Valeria wouldn't have attempted such an ambush, fearing wandless magic. But against a fraud? Not coming out of the cloak, she picked up every animated portrait and photo and placed her securely in her extended purse. No reason to leave any witnesses to what would follow.

"Good evening Gilderoy." She used false familiarity and whispering to cover her identity as a student, just in case. "We have much to talk about, you and I."

 **...**

Gilderoy Lockhart woke up in the middle of the night to find himself still sitting on his desk, with a pounding headache, mouth and thoughts still fuzzy, and his stack of letters from his many adoring fans still unanswered. Had it been almost anyone else, they'd have assumed late night drinking, celebrating their new position and the start of the school year. Gilderoy however was far more experienced than that; he immediately knew his memory had been tampered with, probably via potions if his dry mouth was an indicator. His many portraits and animated photos were gone and there was no evidence of a struggle between him and another. Before he could truly panic though, he noticed the letter;

 _Gilderoy,_

 _Albus Dumbledore is aware of your secret but has no proof. Hiring you was his plan to expose you. Unfortunately, I found out too late to warn you and now you're trapped; either abandoning your position or failing to fulfill it would draw too much attention to deflect. Fortunately, there are ways you can avoid Dumbledore's trap, 'prove' your credentials and retire after a fulfilling year with nobody questioning you again. I am enclosing the plan I've managed to work out - look over it to see if it is to your liking. Do not attempt to recover your memories of our meeting or our previous work together. The castle is home to accomplished Legilimens, Charms Masters and Potions Masters; your standard precautionary Memory Extraction would not stand up to Veritaserum and sufficiently powerful wizards can break Memory Charms if they know what they're looking for. This way they cannot uncover immediate proof of everything, acidentally or on purpose._

 _Yours sincerely,_

 _Your number one fan._

Gilderoy had never been very brave, or good with most magic. But he was smart, cunning and hard-working and the plan provided played to his strengths. He did not remember his number one fan... but he supposed that was for the best. Had the advice he was given been unreasonable or beyond his abilities, he'd have done his best to simply vanish and damn the consequences. But this... Oh, to outsmart Albus Dumbledore himself... If he could pull it off, it would be his greatest accomplishment...


	25. Quidditch Attack

**And thus we get into the plot for year two, which is going to stray rather far from the original - even if several plot points and ideas are reused. No worries though, there's a good reason for everything and stuff... I think. Sorry for the delay - I'd been having some RL issues. Update frequency will be increasing during August, once vacations start.  
**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, JK Rowling does. If I did, Quidditch wouldn't have been the number one wizarding sport.**

 **...**

"Hey Val, fancy meeting you here today!"

If there was even a trace of embarassment or uncertainty in Tracey's greeting, Valeria couldn't find it. The brunette Slytherin gave her usual knowing smirk then elbowed her taller, blonder companion. Daphne shot her a reproachful look, tried to say something to Valeria but obviously the words wouldn't come. Mouth closing to form a firm expression for a moment, only to twist in disgust - almost certainly at herself.

"Let's move to the stands." Valeria suggested. "We can talk without being overheard there - we're the only ones here. Besides..." she smiled at the other two girls "...Harry and his team have to show up, eventually."

"Don't you mean Draco?" Tracey asked her as they climbed to a higher vantage point. "Half our House has been whispering about his making the team all week long. Today's his first practice so we thought we'd have some fun at his expense."

"An admirable goal." Valeria mock complimented and the two of them giggled. "Though I have it on good authority it's the Gryffindors' first practice, not ours. I actually came to see Harry fly."

"Weird..." Tracey scanned the still-empty Quidditch field. "Marcus Flint said something about testing new brooms for the team today so how could it be the Gryffindors' practice?"

"Enough!" Daphne interrupted, speaking for the first time. "Must you make inane smalltalk to avoid the obvious issue? Yes, our families don't want the two of us making waves just now. Yes, being seen to support the House's Quidditch team will win us some approval." The taller blonde's hands shot in the air in exasperation.

"Why Daphne..." Tracey started sweetly "If I knew some Quidditch talk would force you out of a whole week's indecision on how to approach our friend, I'd have done it ages ago."

"Look..." Daphne seemed to deflate. "You know my family are blood purists. They may not be fanatics but they don't know what to do about their daughter being friends with a halfblood and a muggleborn either. The only reason they'd been prepared to accept you was talent. But then, the three of us stumble into one of the Dark Lord's own plots and help foil it. The same Dark Lord my family had once supported and thought was dead." The three of them sobered up immediately at that. "With a new war only a matter of time even if most people don't realize it, my parents are doing everything to protect me and the rest of the family. We have few allies in Dumbledore's side, if any. And the Dark Lord would never forget even an accidental foiling of his plans. Keeping our head down is..."

"...not going to happen." Valeria finished, if not exactly in the way Daphne intended. "It won't work, Daphne. Not for you, whose family stayed in the sidelines during the last war, not for Tracey, who's a halfblood set to inherit Headship of an ancient house, not for me for obvious reasons." The future had troubled Valeria all Summer long but, with some good ideas from her family and a not-so-friendly diary, hoped she'd come up with a workable plan. Now, if only the other two would be convinced to follow it. "Keeping our head down, not supporting either side, won't win us allies. If, on the other hand, we become useful..."

"You're mental!" came Daphne's eloquent retort. "We're twelve, Campbell. What use are we to either side?"

"Dumbledore did set up a group of eleven-year-olds to save the Philosopher's Stone last year." Valeria quickly went through the questionable points of their adventure her brother had pointed out to her, painting the whole event in a new light. "...so it's possible our esteemed Headmaster is already using people our age as his agents. I don't see the Dark Lord having a problem with doing the same."

"That old goat!" Daphne cursed with feeling. "What is he doing, putting students at risk?"

"Daphne? I think his brother is the one with a thing about goats." Tracey interjected in her own inimitable manner. "And Val, we didn't save the Stone. Dumbledore destroyed it, remember?"

"Eh, we might as well have." Valeria said as nonchalantly as she could. "On an encounter that might have killed many an adult wizard, we avoided dying horribly and proved our worth along the Boy-Who-Lived. Prove ourselves a few more times and our problems might just go away... at least in the short run."

Down in the field, the Gryffindor Quidditch team had made an appearrance. Led out by an excited Oliver Wood, they were going through a few warm-up exercises before doing anything serious. Strangely enough, Harry did not seem very enthusiastic despite his incomprehensible love of flying on a broom and the opportunity to play as Seeker for his own House. Valeria wondered whether the rumors about Wood being a merciless slavedriver where Quidditch training was concerned were true. This training would be in an unusually normal hour for him unless... Did he insist on an equally exhausting theory and tactics session - one that started several hours earlier?

"Hah, I think Potter's asleep on his broom." Tracey said, echoing Valeria's thoughts. "He flew a lot better against Flitwick's keys last year."

"Boys and their little games." Daphne made a disgusted expression. "No Slytherin in sight, either. Getting up so early turned out to be a total waste."

"Hold your hippogriffs, princess." Tracey pointed towards the quidditch field's southern entrance where about a dozen forms in Slytherin green could be seen approaching on foot. "It's not over till the Fat Lady sings. Or Oliver Wood, as the case may be - this ought to be good." The Gryffindor team, followed by Ron Weasley and a redheaded firstie girl that must be his sister, furiously marched up to Marcus Flint and his people. Oliver Wood advanced at the head of the red-and-gold group, already shouting at his opposite number about booking the field and the Slytherins having no right to show up.

"Here's an idea..." Valeria mused, searching for any drawbacks of her sudden inspiration and finding none.

"Oh, Merlin." Daphne groaned. "What is it this time? Dueling a dozen people at once? Going on an Acromantula hunt through the Forbidden Forest? Playing amateur hour Auror and hunting dark wizards in the dungeons?" Valeria and Tracey rolled their eyes, grabbed one of their friend's hands each, and frog-marched her down the stands. By the time the three girls had arrived at the scene, the two teams were only a couple of insults away from open warfare.

"At least no Gryffindor had to bribe their way into the team!" The redheaded firstie was saying. "They all got there with talent alone."

"Nobody asked you, Weasel pint!" Draco snarled back oh so cleverly. "Filthy blood-traitors and their..."

"You know Draco, her point is a good one." Valeria said, drawing murderous stares from the entire Slytherin team and incredulous glances from everyone else. "Or it would be..." She smirked. "...if the Gryffindor team hadn't been cheating for years, now."

"WHAT?!"

"What are you talking about, Campbell?" Marcus Flint demanded in a far more reasonable tone than the one Oliver Wood had used.

"Fairness, of course." She forced a serious frown on her face then turned to face Wood and the others in red and gold. "Most years only get six free evenings per week, plus two free mornings in the weekend; that makes eight. And yet, Mr. Wood here has been booking the field four times a week for as long as he's been Captain. This leaves only one, maybe two, training sessions per week for every other house." She said that last in an obviously affronted tone, then looked down at the Weasley girl. "Of course your House team would seem more talented. They have been getting nearly four times as much training as any other team. How would you like it if others didn't let you train, develop your own talent?"

Her words had a profound effect on everyone present. Marcus, Draco and the rest of the Slytherin team were obviously angry. Surprisingly, so was the youngest Weasley. Her brother was staring daggers at her, of course, but both Harry and Wood looked gobsmacked. Now, to go for the kill. "Good job doing it all legally too, Wood." She smiled winningly at the older Gryffindor. "How very Slytherin of you. Then again, the Deputy Headmistress is your Head of House. She even got a Gryffindor to be the commentator for all matches which is not biased. No sir, Lions are all brave and good and would never sabotage every other team like that."

"Shut up, you snake!" Shouted Ron Weasley, waving his Spellotape-patched wand around. "I can't believe I trusted you!"

"Weasley, don't point that broken wand like that!" Daphne warned, trying to pull Valeria out of the line of fire. "Do you know how dangerous it is?"

"As if I'd believe anything a filthy snake would say!" The furious boy shouted again and before anyone could react was already throwing a curse.

 _"Slugulus Eructo!"_

A loud bang echoed around the stadium and a jet of green light shot out of the wrong end of Ron's wand, hitting him in the stomach and sending him reeling backwards on to the grass... Ron opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Instead he gave an almightly belch and several slugs dribbled out of his mouth on to his lap.

"Slug-vomiting Charm." Daphne commented with a shake of her head, her experience in Duelling allowing her to easily recognize it. "Very hard to cast, not easily countered. It also happens to be Dark." Her eyes narrowed at the group of Gryffindors. "House rivalries are not my problem but people trying to curse me definitely are. If you don't want to see whether the Board of Governors would expell a previous violator of the Statute of Secrecy for trying to attack the daughter of one of their members without provocation, you will leave. Now. And Weasley?"

Ron's answer was another wave of slugs. Disgust evident on her face, the tall Slytherin blonde kicked the broken wand back into its owner's lap. "This thing is a danger to you and others. I'll be talking to some teachers, Professor Snape among them. If you don't want detention every time you mess a spell up, you will get a new wand."

 **...**

"Very nice, you three." Marcus Flint grudgingly admitted after the Gryffindors had cowardly retreated. "It's been years since I last saw the whole Gryffindor team wordless, especially the Twins. Didn't know you cared about Quidditch."

"We don't. But we're all about fairness and House unity and stuff." Tracey said cheerfully while Draco snorted.

"After that humongous bungle, your opinion doesn't count Malfoy." Marcus didn't like the too-proud second year but he had to admit; she did have style.

"What are you blabbering about now, mudblood?"

"Are you in Slytherin or not?" Valeria asked. "Best brooms in the market for the whole team and announcing it to the Gryffindors is the first thing you do?"

"It's not as if we could have kept them a secret." Marcus interjected, not wanting to see two valuable assets at each other's throats. His new Seeker had gotten the whole team new brooms and, with Terrence Higgs opting to focus on his NEWTs this year, Malfoy was the only other decent Seeker in the House. Campbell might be annoying and a mudblood but after that stunt back there he could kiss her. Halving the Gryffindors' practice time and messing with the Lions' reputation in the process? A meeting with the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff Captains was in order - right after a little talk with Professor Snape.

"Marcus, you may be an awesome Quidditch player but you're pants in Charms." Campbell said and he couldn't disagree, not with probably having to repeat his Charms NEWT next year. "You could have gotten someone to put a concealment charm on the brooms, made them look like older models. Hootch rarely attends practice sessions and it isn't illegal anyway. You could have revealed them in the game with Gryffindor, giving them no chance to prepare. Spell-resistant varnish or not, I bet our Head of House would have managed it... and given you points for the subterfuge, too."

The three girls went towards the castle after that, while the team made for the Slytherin locker room. Marcus Flint had much to think about... and maybe a couple old friends whose opinions he'd try to change.

 **...**

"Think we won a few points with our Housemates?" Valeria said as the three of them reached the front gate.

"Not nearly enough." The constant pessimist of the trio countered. "Far too many see you as a mudblood first and anything else never. Barring a miracle I don't know if anything we do will change that."

"Cheer up Daphne." Tracey elbowed her best friend as she bounced up the stairs. "Always waiting for the worst..."

"...only means I'm pleasantly surprised when it fails to happen." The tall blonde said drily.

"Riiight." The brunette huffed and tossed her hair. "Speaking of the worst, why the sudden interest in Weasley? Most people might have only seen the scary pureblood princess making proclamations from her throne but I did notice you were giving good advice to the bloody idiot."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Daphne denied and the other two girls dissolved into giggles. Their fun was abruptly interrupted though by a terrible, unearthly scream coming from inside.

"Wands out!" Daphne snapped. Valeria rolled her eyes - if there was anything last year had taught her it was to always have her wand at hand and a Shield Charm raised. The three of them cautiously got into the Entrance Hall, the strongest curse they knew on their lips.

The large, cavernous chamber was all but empty - unsurprising, given the day and early hour. What was unusual was the very small boy lying lifeless in the middle of the room, a broken camera next to his prone body. Valeria knew the first-year Gryffindor; they'd met on the train only a few days ago. Gone now was his usual cheer, boundless energy and annoying but cute intrusiveness; Colin Creevey simply lay there, skin cold and pallid, no life in his limbs or eyes. He looked, as far as the three of them could tell, well and truly dead.

Despite her experiences the previous year, despite her frequent brushes with mortal peril or even her encounters with the Dark Lord, Valeria still found the body of a little boy profoundly upsetting. Her hands were shaking with the efford of controlling herself, refraining from unleashing torrents of flame at every target within reach. It would not help. No action she could take would help Colin ever again.

"Bloody hell." Tracey cursed, drawing hers and Daphne's attention. "Look at the wall!" They did. Finger-wide, inch-deep furrows have been dug into the stone of the castle, no evidene of tools or claws in their magic. They formed letters, the letters giving a simple yet ominous message.

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED.

ENEMIES OF THE HEIR BEWARE.


	26. Defensive Positions

**RiddleAllOfMe: the story isn't going to have any pairings/romance before the girls get a couple years older. They're too young yet. On the other hand, the core characters are a trio of Slytherin girls and a trio of Gryffindor boys so eventually...**

 **Urazz: the plot is a bit more complex than that. Repeating the basic Chamber plot didn't appeal much and Valeria being more experienced and less naive than Ginny (not to mention a year older) gives an interesting opportunity to surprise you guys.**

 **ro781727: don't worry, the girls aren't going anywhere. Snape's Legilimency... I always found it strange that Harry discarded all the rumors about Snape reading minds. As for Lockhart, he's a fraud, not an idiot. If not for the fluke of a broken wand, he'd have easily overcome Harry and Ron after deceiving them and stealing said wand - even though they expected treachery. Let's not forget that he managed to disable and steal the memories from over half a dozen accomplished witches and wizards that actually did the feats described in his books, not to mention countless other magicals who witnessed or knew of them, and was never caught once. That's _hundreds_ of victims he managed to take out without suspicion - something no Death Eater ever managed.**

 **Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling. If it belonged to me, I'd be as famous as Lokhart - and I'm obviously not.**

 **...**

Pink, purple, and gold: Lockhart's office was as ugly as Valeria remembered. Dozens of animated photos were showing off his perfectly straight and shiny teeth, his glamoured and gelled hair. Nobody was in a mood for any of it, of course, except for the fool himself.

"How dreadful that young Mr. Creevey had to die so young! He had a bright future ahead of him! Why, had I been there I could have saved him. He was killed with the Transmogrifian Torture, which I've encountered in my travels. I could have administered the counter-curse and prevented his terrible and agonizing end!"

No he couldn't have. The Transmogrifian Torture was not even a curse to begin with. It was a transfiguration technique that used Switching Spells on living victims to progressively exchange more and more of their bodies with nonliving material until they died. Seeing as Colin still looked perfectly whole, there was no way it was involved. Of course, Lockhart was pants at everything except Charms so he wouldn't know that.

"Oh Merlin. Albus, what do we do? Col... Mr. Creevey dead... he was such a sweet child..." Professor McGonagal looked as near a breakdown as Valeria felt. The young Slytherin witch couldn't fault the Head of Gryffindor her lack of composure; she barely knew Colin herself and it was all she could do to focus on facts, observation of useless details occupying her mind to stave off hysteria. Had Colin been one of her students, a kid she failed to protect... she really couldn't imagine what she'd do.

Dumbledore and Professor Snape were working over Colin's body, the Potions Master mixing various draughts and oils too fast for her to identify them, while the Headmaster chanted strange spells in some language Valeria did not recognize. It sounded Eastern... maybe Aramaic? _Avada Kedavra_ did mean "I will destroy as I will speak" in that language after all. Finally, the two wizards stood back and minutely relaxed. Her Head of House swept away a few beads of sweat from his pale face with his sleeve; the first time anyone in Slytherin had seen him display the barest hint of weakness.

"He is not dead, Minerva." Dumbledore announced with an uncharacteristically serious expression on his face. "He was on the edge though, pulling him back from it all we could do. Mr Creevey was struck down with powerful Dark magic and given his youth and undeveloped powers... he needs to go to St. Mungo's right away."

"But... who would do something so... monstrous?" The Head of Gryffindor asked, more bewildered and angry than accusing. Valeria and, from what she could see, Daphne and Tracey too dropped their eyes to the floor in embarassment. She and her friends had feared the faculty would immediately accuse them after they were found on the scene, but Minerva McGonagal had shown more common sense than they'd given her credit for.

"That, I do not know..." Dumbledore replied in his infuriatingly calm manner as he cast some more spells on Colin's comatose form, this time silently. "...neither how it was done. I doubt any student would be capable of it, however." Despite her shock, anger and fear at the entire situation, Valeria snorted. Naturally, it did not go unnoticed. "You disagree, miss Campbell?" the Headmaster asked, fixing her with his penetrating blue stare.

"A student used the Bone-Breaking Curse against me in my first year, Headmaster. Had it struck my ribcage or skull, I would now be deader than Colin." She frowned at the comatose boy. "Upper years are capable of Human Transfiguration or the Unforgivables, I think. Why would this be beyond them?"

"Don't be absurd, Campbell." Her Head of House sneered. "Given the percentage of dunderheads the student body boasts of, I fail to see how any one of you would advance in the Dark Arts sufficiently to cast curses neither I nor the Headmaster can recognize. And in any event, you three have been cleared of all charges. What are you still doing here?"

She, Daphne, and Tracey remained silent as the adults' attention shifted between them and Colin. His less than polite dismissal aside, it was good of Professor Snape to send them away after declaring their innocence. Of course, the Hogwarts rumor mill could easily ignore such minor things as facts, proof, and faculty declarations... especially when it suited them. And with three Slytherins found over a seemingly dead Gryffindor...

"Indeed, Severus." Dumbledore concurred, once again fixing the three girls with his penetrating stare. "Let us not burden young minds with such dark matters." How benevolent of him. Not to mention hypocritical. For one thing, there was the whole debacle with the Philosopher's Stone last year. For another... was that the slightest touch of Legilimency Valeria felt?

The three girls retreated to the dungeons that night with far more questions than they had answers.

 **...**

"It has come to my attention that recent events have been the cause of much uncertainty among you." Lockhart said in his usual flowery manner. It was their first Defense lesson after the incident and the joint Slytherin-Ravenclaw second years were more interested in their repetition of unfounded rumor than the ramblings of an incompetent professor. "Worry not though, for I am here to teach you the best way to defend yourselves from any and all attacks."

"Yeah, right." Draco stage-whispered. "The only thing Lockhart knows well is how to totally humiliate Potter."

"Mr. Malfoy, would you like to help me with a demonstration?" Underneath Lockhart's ever-present smile there was a hint of gleeful satisfaction. Draco didn't notice; he was too busy swaggering across the classroom and winking at his posse of sycophants.

"Now Mr. Malfoy, if you could retrieve your wand? This is a practical demonstration." There was some scattered laughter as the blond boy had to run back to his desk for it. Apparently, he'd thought it would be one of their Professor's usual reenactments.

"Two sickles on Lockhart making a fool of himself." Tracey whispered.

"I see your sickles and raise you a Galleon." Valeria whispered back, her eyes on the stage. She really didn't want to miss what was coming.

"You're on." Tracey nodded, then paused. "Wait, what?"

"Now Mr. Malfoy, I want you to attack me." Lockhart raised his voice to be heard over the increasingly loud whispers. "Don't hold back; send your best spells at me so I can show your classmates the proper way to defend themselves." The various conversations all over the class were silenced at that as everyone focused on Draco and their Professor with anticipation.

 _"Furnunculus!"_

"Now, now, Mr. Malfoy..." Lockhart said as the Pimple Jinx struck the wall to his left to no effect. "I'm sure you can do better than that."

 _"Colloshoo! Calvorio!"_

"Sticking up one's shoes and cursing off hair?" Lockhart said in an admonishing tone as both curses went off-target. "Poor form, Mr. Malfoy, very poor form."

 _"Petrificus Totalus! Melofors!"_

Draco was getting angry now, trying for stronger curses. Not that it helped him any; as much as she'd have liked to see Gilderoy Lockhart with a pumpkin for a head, they too missed him by a mile. The Professor was just standing there with a smirk on his face, wasting no energy in defending or dodging, while Malfoy's best efforts came not even close to harming him.

"Oh well." Lockhart said with mock sympathy. "You did your best." He finally deigned to flick his wand in responce and Malfoy collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut. As the whole class watched in shock, their classmate begun to snore loudly. Draco was not dead; only asleep. Valeria was certain however that he'd prefer the finality of the former to the utter humiliation of the latter.

"As you can see," Lockhart interrupted everybody else's shock with a grandiose gesture towards his vanquished opponent "...there are many ways to defend oneself, some subtler than others. Unlike most situations, in battle it is being unseen and unheard that are the signs of mastery, not flashiness. Now, form up in pairs and I am going to share with you a part of my very extensive experience in such."

"That's a Galleon you owe me, Trace." Valeria said as the whole class scrambled to follow Lockhart's instructions.

"What. The Hell. Was that!" Her friend hissed as they paired up. "I don't care what the girls in other Houses are saying, the man's a fraud!"

"Maybe." He certainly was; their little night-time discussion had confirmed it. "But Tracey, even a fraud has to be good at something. Otherwise, his being a fraud would have been revealed years ago." Fortunately for Lockhart, Valeria had also learned what that something was. In some ways, their fraudulent Professor had been a genius to accomplish what he had. He'd only needed a little push to adapt his skills to teaching Defense. Had that not been the case... well, accidents happened. Valeria absolutely refused to waste that many hours learning nothing.

"All right, everyone ready? Good." Lockhart said as most of the class hung from his every word. Except from Malfoy; he was still snoring. "The charm we'll learn today has the simplest of wand movements; a straight line ending with your wand pointed at your target. Before throwing it at each other, try it on small, inanimate targets like your book bags. The effect sends a shock through your target's mind and nervous system you see, rendering them unconscious. Don't worry though, it can be quickly countered by the even simpler Reviving Charm. Now, repeat the incantation after me."

 _"Stupefy!"_

 **...**

"I still can't believe Lockhart taught us something useful!" Tracey said when the three of them had returned to their dormitory. She huffed in annoyance, threw her bag full of Lockhart's works thirty feet across the room and into her trunk, then flicked her wand and relocked it. Of the three of them, she was the one to put simple charms into everyday uses the most, a fact she most frequently put on display. Daphne had a more practical mind and, surprisingly for a pureblood princess, didn't mind some physical work while Valeria herself was too busy working with obscure magics to show off.

"What I want to know is what he used to crush Malfoy so easily." Throwing off her school robes and withdrawing a filmsy yet expensive silk nightgown from the trunk compartment that held a serviceable walk-in wardrobe in its expanded insides, she checked the state of her hair and sighed. "The Stunning Charm wasn't bad but something that could make a fool of that arrogant prick... that, I'd really want to learn. Trace, do you have any Sleekeazy's left? I can't find my bottle."

"Riiight, because we already mastered stunning?" The brunette snorted. "You being one of three people who pulled the charm off doesn't mean the rest of the class is ready for anything so advanced we don't even notice it. As for hair potion, I am out. And didn't you lend yours to the Carrow Twins last week? Bet you two Knuts they used it all up."

"It was a Confundus Charm." Valeria said absent-mindedly as she retrieved her Diary from the most secure compartment in her trunk. Unlike her other interesting books, she'd found she could neither shrink it nor conceal it; the spells would run off like water against _imperviused_ glass. "Few spells can do what it did, have no visible effect and can be cast silently. Then a simple sleep spell for the finish."

"Great." Daphne tossed her silver mane in annoyance at the lack of hair potion... or maybe the difficulty of the spell she wanted to learn. "At least we got an answer before Val buried her nose in a book again. I'm off for a bath. If you see the Carrow Twins, send them my way."

 **...**

"Hey Tom, you there?" she said and her quill wrote.

 _"May I remind you it was you who failed to write for over a week?"_ Whiny bastard. Well, of course. He was male.

"Some people do take their education seriously, you know." She smirked. "Not to mention other matters of importance."

 _"What matters?"_ Yes! Hook, line and sinker!

"A student was killed a few days ago. Struck dead without a mark." Let's see if he saw through that. So far, weaving lies into their conversation had failed to get a reaction at all. Since she had no other leads though, repeating it was the only way she could possibly uncover the identity of her new pen-pal.

 _"I see. Were you close?"_

"What? No, he was a mudblood. It's just that..."

 _"If he was attacked, then so might you be. Yes, I understand. Was it the Killing Curse?"_

"I don't think so." She paused. How much to reveal? "Dumbledore didn't know what did it."

 _"Does he ever?"_ She could practically hear the sneer. Tom's opinion of the Headmaster was far lower than her own. _"Any other clues? I can't make a good guess with so little."_

"Well..." In for a Knut, in for a Galleon. "There was writing on the wall. A warning about a heir. And some Chamber of Secrets."

"..."

"Tom?"

 _"You're lying."_ Well, that was new. She didn't expect that reaction, not after the rumors running rampant through the whole House.

"Why would I be lying about that?" About other things, yes. About the warning, no.

 _"Because it's impossible. The Chamber was opened in my time and the culprit was caught. It was then sealed forever."_ Ah, back to the lie about him being a memory preserved in a book and not a living, thinking correspondent. The rest of it though... she had no idea what was true and what wasn't but this was the first break in Tom's pattern of friendly, pleasant conversation only designed to lull her into false security. She'd have to play it by ear.

"OK then Mr. smarty-pants. Explain to me why would I fabricate something so far-fetched as to be unbelievable if it didn't actually happen.

"..."

"Tom, you still there?" The silence had stretched on for nearly fifteen minutes.

 _"Tell me everything. Every detail, no matter how insignificant. And then the two of us will get to the bottom of this, I promise."_

The responce was written in furious speed, the letters smudged and uneven. Whatever part of her story had struck such a change in Tom Riddle had not made him more likely to confide in her or slip and reveal himself by accident. It had made him angry...


	27. False Accusations

**Turns out, trying to post more often for the same story is problematic. On the other hand, the makings of another story have been slowly coming together in my mind so it might be possible to post alternatively on two different stories. Said second story is tentatively named "Potter vs Paradox" and it involves some of the fanfiction cliches this one doesn't - such as timetravel. Tell me what you think on the matter; would you like to see alternative posting in two different stories, or for me to focus on just one?**

 **...**

"Hey, Val! Wait!"

The Slytherin witch had been trying to lose the two boys in the labyrinthine corridors of Hogwarts for several minutes. Unfortunately, after Harry's recent growth spurt, both he and Neville were taller than her, had longer legs, and were more athletic. Admitting the inevitable she stopped by the bust of Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, also known as Paracelsus, the medieval alchemist.

"What do you two want now?" She asked, hands on hips and wand ready. If one more Gryffindor dared throw some false accusation her way...

"We umm..." Neville elbowed Harry, spurring the smaller boy out of his momentary loss of words. "Wedontreallythinkyoudidit!" He finally blurted all at once.

"I'm sorry, what?" She wasn't about to let them off the hook that easily. Not after the lasting total silence and accusing stares from her supposed friends.

"We... err... don't think you had anything to do with the attack on Colin." Neville said for the two of them while Harry nodded and added: "You aren't, you know, evil."

"Thank you Harry, for that statement of support." Naïve though it might be; evil was the least of reasons one would attack another. Though she couldn't see how any of the others might fit in this case... except for stupidity. That one could always be the cause; it's what made it so terrible. "Now, where was said support over the past two weeks?"

"We... ah..." She couldn't help but roll her eyes as the two boys blushed in embarrassment.

"It's OK. You can say it." She stared at them mock-earnestly. _"We were stupid enough to believe the rumors because everyone else did."_ She intoned in a sing-song voice and the two boys winced.

"Look..." Harry started pleadingly. "It was stupid and we're sorry. But... couldn't you have... I dunno... said something before?" He stared at the floor because he couldn't meet her eyes. "The whole House thought Colin was dead. All we knew was that three Slytherin girls had been found in the same room. Word only came from St. Mungo's today that he would make it."

"Yes, yes, I should disregard the Headmaster's decision on withholding information to counter a rumor you shouldn't have believed in the first place." She snorted at the idiocy of that statement. "Because the real perpetrator should know their victim survived and could bear witness as soon as they recovered? Because the identity of further potential witnesses should be confirmed and announced to the whole school and paint a target on their backs? Because Daphne, Tracey and I would want attention and rumors from every House and not just Gryffindor?"

"But..." the dark-haired boy became more and more frustrated at being the target of her tirade. Tough luck. "Couldn't you have talked to us, at least? After the Quidditch incident, everyone wanted to blame you for something."

"It's only a game, Harry. I'll never understand what you see in it."

"Val! It's not just a game! It's... it's..." He struggled with the words, not quite knowing how to phrase what he wanted to say. "I love flying, OK? And winning the House Cup... you can't tell me everyone in Slytherin doesn't love coming first! Quidditch helps with that, without even counting the Quidditch Cup."

"Everyone is entitled to enjoying something Harry, be it Flying, or Herbology, or mastering new spells." She smiled at Neville and the taller boy smiled back. Neville's opinion on Flying was worse than her own. "That doesn't mean it should be made into a dangerous tournament. Besides, your other reason for winning at Quidditch is rather baseless."

"What do you mean?" Harry asked with a frown.

"Let's say I win a single point per lesson on average for good work or answering questions." The two boys nodded. If anything she'd understated things, what with a typical question earning two to five points. "Seven classes, two times per week on average, thirty-six weeks. That's five hundred plus points personally earned towards the House Cup over the year - more than the entire Quidditch team."

"B-but..." the two Gryffindors couldn't speak. One has to retrieve one's jaw from the floor before doing that, and it took them over a minute. "That's impossible! An entire House doesn't have that many points by the end of the year."

"Not doing good work, being caught breaking the rules, annoying one's teachers, or failing to learn spells... most people lose more points over the year than they win. And if you have a group of people training for Quidditch so often that they only have a single free evening to do the entire week's studying and homework..."

"That's why you did it?!" Harry said, obviously struggling between anger for ruining his team's training time and appreciation for indirectly helping him with his probably dismal homework situation. Unfortunately he had it all wrong, as boys usually did.

"No, Harry." She said, sadly. "If you are losing points now for not learning magic well, what will you lose if you're only a mediocre wizard by the time Voldemort returns?"

And with that parting shot, she made for her original destination. She had no problem ruining her friends' mood if it would help save their lives later. But for now, she still had to have that little talk with Hagrid.

 **...**

"Give up, Val. He's not here." Tracey said as the three of them searched Hagrid's hut and the surrounding area for the gentle giant. Or half-giant, as the case may be.

"Even his gigantic boarhound's gone." Daphne shook her head, her silver mane dancing. "I could have sworn that thing was part Graphorn; it's the right size for it."

"Great!" Valeria kicked one of the enlarged pumpkins in frustration. "Just as we want him to answer some questions, he vanishes." Relying on Tom's information alone felt like a recipe to disaster to her but not many people close at hand would know what had happened fifty years ago. Asking Hagrid about the Chamber had seemed like the best idea. It wouldn't draw nearly as much attention as asking the teachers would, and the only student Hagrid might like better than her was Harry.

"Ye lasses wouldn't be looking for Hagrid now, would ye?" The cultured, gruff, dry with age voice made them jump and point their wands at the suddenly appearing stranger. An older gentleman with a many-lined face, silver hair, grey robes worn threadbare after so many years that even repairing charms could do little for them. His right hand was missing, replaced by a wooden prosthetic, and animated with magic. And unless his uneven gait had some other mysterious cause, one of his legs must be the same. His laugh at their surprised reaction however, was loud and strong.

"Good reflexes, there. They'd serve ye well in my classes, aye? Help ye keep all your limbs." He chuckled again.

"Professor Kettleburn, sir!" Tracey exclaimed. "We didn't see you there."

"Excellent! I still got it, then." He gave them a lopsided smile. "Hard to be stealthy at my age and condition, no? But I manage, somehow. Hard to forget the skills of so many decades skulking after dangerous creatures."

"Professor, have you seen Hagrid?" Like Tracey, Daphne seemed to have at least heard of the man. Valeria, for all her more than passing interest into how Hogwarts was run, had neither seen, nor heard him mentioned. Then again, it was hard to get access to such information if one preferred to avoid the Headmaster and his potential Legilimency-enabled intrusions. "We need to ask him a few questions."

"Friends of his, are ye?" He stared at them with white eyes Valeria now saw must have been scarred by something corrosive in the past; not only was their faded colour uneven, but the eyelids and surrounding tissue was covered in what looked like old burn marks.

"I... believe myself to be his friend, sir." She replied when she saw both Tracey and Daphne hesitating. "More than that, I couldn't say."

"Ah, I see we have here the rarest of magical creatures; an honest witch." He winked at her. "I am afraid Hagrid is having a few problems lately. Of the scaly kind, if you catch my drift. But ask away, lass, and I'll endeavour to answer to the best of my ability and discretion."

Oh, bloody hell. Hagrid was having problems with... best not to even think about it. At least if they woke up one day to find the Forbidden Forest burned down to cinders, they'd know the cause. This Professor Kettleburn seemed to know all about it though, and did not seem overly worried. Maybe he was even helping Hagrid manage his little monster problem?

"Sir... what can you tell us about the Chamber of Secrets?"

"Ah..." The aging Professor lost his vibrant attitude, his smile, and the gleam in his eyes. All that remained was the old man, stooped with age, maimed by those threats he'd faced but didn't quite manage to overcome. "Nasty business, that. Too many times we searched the castle, Dumbledore and I. Never found anything of note, and disappointed too many people one too many times."

"Sir...?"

"However did you hear that story?" He frowned at them. "Half a century it has been... and we put enough effort into having it forgotten, since we never did manage to solve it. Hagrid deserved some peace and quiet, a chance at life despite all his faults."

"What do you mean? Sir?" The old Professor was almost rambling now. What did Hagrid, of all people, have to do with the Chamber of Secrets?

"Don't you get it, lass? Opening the Chamber was what Hagrid was expelled for, fifty years ago." Wait, what?! "Utter codswallop, of course. The lad only harboured one itty, bitty Acromantula, not some abomination. Hardly a cause for concern, let alone the cause of multiple petrifications and one murder." Professor Kettleburn looked very sad and very small just then. "Dumbledore always thought he was framed. Myself, I was new in my position back then, uncertain. I was not sure what to believe and, to my shame, went with the flow."

"But sir..." Valeria interrupted. "Colin was neither petrified nor killed."

"Yes, confusing, isn't it? For years I'd convinced myself I knew what had killed that girl, if only after the fact. But now... now I am only an old man who's proven he knows nothing."

The three Slytherin witches and the aging Professor stood next to Hagrid's empty hut, each lost in their own thoughts. Valeria wondered if she should ask about Tom Riddle, but discarded the notion. In the off-chance Professor Kettleburn knew who she was asking about, there were no guarantees he'd answer. He was already curious how they knew to ask Hagrid about the Chamber, even though they'd have never expected him to be so very involved in the last time the Chamber was opened. Furthermore, she was beginning to think she'd been wrong about Tom's nature. The hints against him being any person involved with modern-day Wizarding Britain were increasing in number by the day, and some indicating his knowledge about the Chamber had begun to appear. She still didn't believe the "preserved memory" scenario though - all methods of memory storage she'd researched indicated memories couldn't be made interactive. She'd even asked Lockhart, his knowledge of the subject one of the reasons she had not immediately exposed the fraud for what he was, but gotten nowhere.

"Lass, you're Hagrid's friend, aye?" Professor Kettleburn finally said. "Could you do an old man a favour?"

"It depends on the favour, Professor."

"Yes, yes, you're a Slytherin, I know." He smiled sadly. "Do keep an eye on him, will you? Our biggest friend is not the most prudent of people." Huge understatement, that. "I won't be here forever, you know."

"Professor?"

"Oh, just the ramblings of an old man, my dear." He sighed. "Just keep an eye out, and a word of advice for those with less self-preservation than you."

As if she'd been doing anything but, this past year...

 **...**

 _"As with all ancient Arts, Soul-Magic is equally based on emotion, intent and knowledge. That remains true from its simplest uses, such as the Killing and Spirit-Severing Curses, to the most esoteric, such as the Fidelius and Essence Transference. The presence-revealing spell is no different, despite it being the easiest of all such magics to learn and cast. At a fundamental level, it requires a certain curiosity and innate desire to know from the caster, for the caster's will to enhance and project through means of the spell's learned structure and purpose. Without such a base upon which to build, any rote component such as an incantation or wand motion will amount to nothing..."  
_

It was the day of the Slytherin vs Gryffindor match and, as usual, it found Valeria, Daphne and Tracey in the near-empty common room, working on their spellcasting. Having rammed her head against the apparently unsolvable problem of the Chamber for far too long, she'd tried some light reading to clear her mind. While largely unknown and mostly illegal, the types of magic she'd been studying were proving fascinating.

 _"Homenum Revelio!"_

If only she could get even the simplest of them to work. Her latest attempt only made a glowing aura appear around Daphne and Tracey for a moment, as well as a couple more human-shaped spots to flash in her vision where she suspected other people occupied nearby rooms behind the closest walls. But in addition to the very brief duration it came up with flukes, such as the oddly square, less-than-head-sized aura flickering faintly from inside her trunk. Ideally, the spell should reveal all presences as glowing auras in her eyes, unhindered by physical or magical barriers, glamours, or even invisibility cloaks, and a near-perfect casting should also give her an idea of the nature of the person revealed.

 _"Homenum Revelio!"_

Nope, only a split-second flicker. How frustrating, that something so useful would be in her grasp but still beyond her skill.

"Come on, Val. You've been failing at this spell for hours!" Tracey said without taking her eyes from the Potions assignment she was working on. "Maybe it's too advanced for you."

"Of course it's too advanced for her, she's a mudblood." Pansy Parkinson snarked as she entered the common room at Malfoy's side. Then she turned her back to them and tried to lift Draco's spirits by running a rather biased comparison between him and Harry and their respective Quidditch skills.

"I take it our team lost?" Valeria asked drily, returning her book to its miniature size and placing it in her pocket. She'd put it in its standard hiding place later, but with the rest of her House back so early she wouldn't have enough peace and quiet for a study session.

"Nobody asked you, filth-spawn." Pansy said angrily as more Slytherins entered. "Go back to failing to cast even the simplest of spells."

 _"Stupefy!"_

The red bolt hit Pansy in the back and the pug-faced witch collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. Valeria walked up to her and flicked her wand, turning her over like a sack of potatoes and incidentally confirming she was well and truly out of it. Draco took more than one step back as she approached.

"Gotta love it when they set themselves up so well for this kind of punchline, eh?" Valeria asked. "You know what, this common room is too small for me and the magnitude of Pansy's idiocy both. I feel like taking a walk." She nodded at Pansy's prone form. "You can sweep her out of sight like the squib she is but if someone restores her, they better be at least a fifth-year... or suffer my displeasure."

She walked out of the Slytherin common room, whispered conversations multiplying behind her. If shows of force were what would save her a lot of trouble in the future, she was all for them. And if the expression the Carrow Twins had by the time she was done was any indication, a good percentage of her House always enjoyed a good show...


	28. Elves and Warnings

**Finally hit 100k words, at the same time this story went over a hundred reviews, favorites and likes. You guys and gals are awesome.**

 **Urazz: Valeria is trying to deceive Riddle. How well that works is yet to be seen. Also, two active Horcruxes thrown in our main cast's second year? Am I that evil, you think? :)**

 **ro781727: Pansy is a spoiled child who's had most things go her way when she shouts loudly enough. She and Draco are slowly weaned out of that belief though. Where they end up is still uncertain.**

 **DaughterofTerpsichore: Thanks for the compliment. As for being sympathetic, the three girls do have their flaws. Having them be perfect is one thing I've been trying to avoid. Some aspects of Valeria's personality can be quite ugly, for example.**

 **askasknot: Riddle, Snape and Hermione all made spells of their own in canon so Valeria will be following that tradition. Don't expect it before late 4th year though. Innovation is more than spellcrafting though; there's a lot that can be done with existing spells, and look at all those terrain features around Hogwarts begging for some rennovation!**

 **Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling. If it belonged to me I'd probably be richer, if the whole series hadn't failed due to my sub-par writing or something.**

 **...**

"Miss Campbell, this is a hospital wing, not a ball room." Madam Pomfrey declared. "I cannot allow five people inside to see one patient that will be coming out in a few hours anyway!"

Unlike many other students, Valeria had never considered the diminutive mediwitch as overbearing or tyrranical before. But with her preventing them - her, Daphne, Tracey, Neville and Ron - from talking to Harry after his too close encounter with an almost certainly sabotaged bludger... The problem was that appealing to her good nature and claiming friendship with a patient did not seem to be working. On the other hand, she wasn't as limited as her Gryffindor friends when something or someone became an obstacle to her goals. And from her friends' past experience, the mediwitch wasn't above using intimidation and outright threats in ruling her territory. Therefore...

"Madam Pomfrey, you are required by oath to treat all ailments of staff and students to the best of your ability, correct?"

"Of course!"

"And those same oaths prevent you from abusing your position and skills in any way, correct?"

"Just what exactly are you insinuating, young lady?" If she was angry before, she was positively furious now.

"Nothing at all, Madam Pomfrey." Valeria lifted her wand and winked at Ron and Neville without letting the nurse see. "What was that incantation, _Ossio Dispersimus_ , right?"

"Stop!" Madam Pomfrey shouted. "Are you insane? Deliberately deboning yourself is... is..."

"The fastest way to get to see my friend? The surest way to miss a test or detention I don't want to do?" A hard-to-cure spell that can both disable and kill, depending on its use? "Guys, remind me to thank Professor Lockhart for showing it to us."

They entered the hospital wing en masse, leaving the mediwitch behind to rage about idiotic Professors and stupidly reckless students. The range and foulness of curse words they could overhear her using was impressive.

"That was awesome." Ron said, his face flush with excitement. "I can't wait to use it to skive off detentions with Snape or Filch!"

"Weasley, try to be less of an idiot." Daphne complained as they made for Harry's bed. "Unless you get a lot better with Healing Spells, you'll be more likely to vanish your skull or ribcage and die, instead of whatever you're trying for. Till then treat it as a dangerous curse, not a toy." Which wasn't far from the truth; the Bone-Breaking Curse was quite similar to the Deboning Spell. It just maximized the damage and difficulty to cure at the expense of utility.

"Hey guys!" Harry said as soon as they'd opened the curtains giving him privacy from the rest of the hospital wing. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"No worries, Potter." Tracey snarked. "We're always willing to carry out a minor invasion to keep you company." She raised her eyebrows suggestively and the boy blushed. Valeria and Daphne joined her in girlish giggles while Neville and Ron watched on, totally baffled.

"What happened, Harry?" Neville asked with concern. "Did the Professors find who sent that bludger against you?"

"Nope!" The Boy-Who-Lived said with too much perkiness for someone who'd been hit by a flying iron sphere heavier than himself, fallen off his broom, and had to regrow three dozen bones overnight after a less-than-competent Professor's intervention.

"Spill!" Valeria threatened, wand raised. "Or I'm vanishing your bones again!"

"OK, OK, hold your hippogryphs!" Harry scanned the room carefully, ensuring nobody he could see could overhear them - and telegraphing that there was, indeed, something interesting to be overhead. Valeria rolled her eyes at the lack of subtlety and raised her wand. In for a Knut, in for a Galleon.

 _"Homenum Revelio!"_

She and her friends all flickered for a couple of seconds, the most she'd managed to hold the spell yet. There was a false positive of her purse glimmering fitfully but no invisible or otherwise concealed people were revealed in the area.

"If you're done?" Harry asked and she nodded. "OK, then, listen carefully. I had a visitor last night. A house elf named Dobby."

"Hogwarts is home to over a hundred house elves." Daphne countered. "What's so interesting about one of them visiting the Great Harry Potter? Given how most Dark families treated them during the last war, the little things probably worship you or something." Harry winced at the pureblood princesse's almost certainly accurate description. Not wanting fame and glory was one of his more endearing traits.

"Dobby wasn't a Hogwarts elf. In fact, he was the one who was stealing my letters all summer." He chuckled, as if at some silly joke. Not taking things seriously was one of his and Weasley's worst qualities. If an elf could steal his letters, what prevented it from editing them, putting words in peoples' mouths? Worse still, what prevented it from adding less than safe things? A walk in Knockturn Alley could give one a good idea just how many enormously dangerous substances existed in the wizarding world, to say nothing of curses. "He also sealed the barrier and made me and Ron lose the train, and charmed that bludger yesterday. Said something about wanting me off Hogwarts."

"Harry..." She sighed at how naive he could be. "Two of those attempts could have killed you! Next time you see this Dobby, throw a Stunner at him. Then bring him to me. There are ways to make him talk."

"Oh come on, Val. You should have seen him." The idiotically noble boy stared at her with wide eyes. "He was so... helpless... pathetic... his own people are practically torturing him. And he can't do anything against them - he's bound to them by magic! It was all he could do to come and warn me about something terrible that would happen at Hogwarts. And now look; terrible things are happening! And every time he tried to say anything more, give any details, he had to punish himself."

"I see..." Valeria, Daphne and Neville frowned at each other, all of them thinking about the problem. The two pureblood heirs had house elves in their own manors, presumably, and Valeria had been studying a couple of things on magical oaths. In the end, Neville shook his head.

"No good. If they ordered him not to reveal the information to anyone, he won't. And if we try to force him... the bond to his master might kill him."

"What if we didn't use force?" Daphne rummaged through her own purse and came up with a pen and a double sheet of paper. One sheet she put back into storage, the other she gave to Harry along with the pen. "Harry, if you stumble into Dobby again, or manage to call him by name, you give him these. Tell him to go somewhere he's all alone and can't be overhead, and speak the information after setting the pen on the paper. Once he's said all he can, he can destroy the paper and pen."

"But what would that accomplish?" he asked, but the Slytherin blonde smiled and shook her head.

"That would be telling. And if you don't know, you can honestly say so to Dobby if he asks."

And thus the plan to catch an elf - or at least get it to give them some info - was made.

 **...**

"Pay attention everyone, for this little charm is one of the most useful and versatile you'll ever learn! In my long and fruitful carreer against the Dark Forces, it is one I have used countless times, often responsible for saving my life and those of others."

Valeria wondered how Lockhart's teaching would have been if his worry of being discovered had made him avoid all the spells he was really good at. Would he have been as pompous and idiotic-sounding if a certain "good friend" never told him Dumbledore was already on to him? Probably. Then again he might have been worse, however hard that might be to imagine.

"As with all the more useful spells, the wandwork is exceedingly simple; a single jab towards your target will do. Take care with your aiming though; this is one of those spells with no visible component or result so you won't know if you were successful until your spell is tested."

"Professor Lockhart, sir?" One of the more annoying Ravenclaw girls asked.

"Yes, miss Patil?" At the Professor's rather obvious wink, Padma managed to blush despite her dark skin.

"Wha-... what spell are we learning... sir?"

"Oh right!" Lockhart laughed. "We're learning the Silencing Charm. From sneaking upon enemies unheard, to robbing Dark wizards of both their megalomaniac monologues and their access to incantations, to rendering the occasional Howler voiceless, the ability to prevent the target from producing sounds is priceless in many situations..."

"If only we could get him to shut up and just show us the spell..." Daphne growled. "At least we're learning advanced magic for a change... in Charms this is usually fourth or fifth year material."

Of course it was. Lockhart was very competent in a narrow group of spells useful in his usual skullduggery, but had only rudimentary practical ability beyond them. Making a full curricculum out of them would have been near-impossible... unless one went for the simple solution of teaching the same spells to most years. Dedicate several weeks to a month per spell for every year except the first and you had enough for your lessons. Younger students would have trouble later in the year but that wouldn't be Lockhart's problem, would it? Most students would never match the awesomeness that was Gilderoy Lockhart anyway. And while unorthodox, nobody could doubt his spells' defensive applications.

"Now children, the incantation is easy enough. It is 'Silencio', the emphasis on the second syllable as usual. Fair warning though: don't expect to get it right at first. The wandwork and wording are simple, but you need a fair bit of will to pull it off - especially on other wizards! That's why we'll be trying it on these crickets first; at less than a thousadth your size and being nonmagical bugs, they should be only mildly challenging."

Valeria scowled at her cricket when her first attempt failed, jabbed her wand harder and slammed her will behind her magic, trying to force her spell to work. The cricket immediately swelled in size, burst through its tiny jar and, when it had become nearly four inches long, let off a really loud and basso chirp that resembled the croaking of a toad. And then it burst into flames.

"Ah, yes, that happens occasionally." Lockhart said with a shrug. "Focus more on the intent itself rather than willing the Charm to work, miss Campbell. You wouldn't want to bloat up and then incinerate your targets, would you? Not even Dark Wizards deserve that."

"Lockhart doesn't know you very well, does he?" Tracey said, sotto voce.

 **...**

 _"Someone is in a bad mood tonight. Is it of the regular kind?"_

"Fifty years in a diary, you couldn't come up with better jokes?" Valeria refrained from lashing out magically, if barely. "What am I saying? Of course you didn't! Ten thousand generations and your kind is still the same!"

 _"Uhuh. Things not working out, love? Maybe you should leave the Soul-Magic for later until- "_

"That's not it. It's just that stupid Charm... why does it come off as an Incineration Curse every... single... time?" She kicked the bedpost, hard. Her mood failed to improve and now her foot hurt, too.

 _"Interesting. You know, when I was younger my magic would lash out as Stinging or Cutting hexes... especially when I was emotional."_

Valeria had had enough with Riddle's false sympathy. In fact, she was so furious with him at the moment that the diary was launched off her bed... then burst into flames. For an infinitesimal pause she wanted to leave it to burn... then came to her senses and scrambled to put out the fire. As with all such fires she'd started in anger though, it too clung tenaciously to life. When she'd finally managed to disperse it, she was only expecting ashes to be left... but the diary surprised her once more. The pages were smoking, yes. But other than that, and a barely perceptible yellowing she wasn't quite sure was there, it seemed intact. Its condition was confirmed a moment later when Riddle wrote to her again.

 _"What did you do?! It felt as if..."_

"Accidental magic, sorry." She wrote back once she'd restored her magic quill in its place. Not quite true - she knew how to ignite things on demand, if rarely with such intensity. "For a moment I thought the diary had been incinerated."

 _"It's a good thing I preserved my memories in something sturdier than mere paper, then. But please, don't try that again."_ Riddle didn't seem very pleased and she couldn't blame him. Whatever the diary actually was, it was obvious a lot of work had been put into its construction. Ruining like that in a fit of fury... _"You, my dear, need to vent."_

"Excuse me?"

 _"Stress relief; it's good for the soul."_ Had the snide, annoyingly oily and false correspondent just made a joke? _"Since you obviously aren't the type to appreciate relaxation, forget your usual plans for the evening and go challenge someone in a duel. Or hex a few mudbloods. Blowing things up will do in a pinch, too. What do you usually do Thursday evening?"_

"Library. Study session." She grumbled, rubbing her hurt foot.

 _"Excellent! Skip that and go wild just once. Don't come back until you're exhausted; it will help with your problem."_

Valeria wondered how messed up she must be for a suspect near-stranger's plan to sound so good in her mind...

 **...**

"C'mon, Ron, she's usually around here in the evenings." Harry whispered to his best friend while the two of them cautiously entered Madam Pince's domain.

"Of course she is!" the youngest Weasley boy huffed. "Slytherin and a know-it-all... could she be any worse?"

"You're forgetting she could kick your backside all over the castle, easy." Harry snarked, then smiled when Ron winced. He was beginning to see just why his friend might dislike Valeria so much - but had also noticed their relationship had mellowed somewhat over the past couple of months. It was kinda cute. "And Scabbers is still irrevocably pink."

"Yeah, yeah, rub it in, will you?" He groaned. "I still don't see why we need her, of all people."

"She's only the best student in our year. Plus, she's a Slytherin." Harry didn't try to convince Ron. The taller boy was a good friend; he usually went along with Harry's plans, at least at first. "If anyone could investigate the accuracy of Malfoy's boasts, it would be her."

"And now you're using big words, just like her." Ron shuddered playfully. "Let's get over this before you're totally converted; I think that's her around the corner."

There was a girl sitting on one of the library's desks with a huge pile of books on either side of her, around the corner. She even had long straight hair that, in the near-gloom of the library could have been either blonde or light brown. But her robes had dark blue trim, not green, and she was quite a bit older than a second year. She was also slumped over the desk, probably having fallen asleep after one too many hours of reading.

"Miss? Excuse me, miss?" Harry tried to shake the girl awake. Whoever she was, she wouldn't enjoy getting caught by an angry librarian and being banned from the library for a week for sleeping with a book for a pillow. But the girl wouldn't wake; she just collapsed against her chair in a boneless heap and it was all harry could do to prevent her from falling on the floor.

"Harry..." Ron asked tentatively. "Should her skin be yellow and grey like that, and her eyes open? She looks..."

The girl didn't look asleep; it looked dead. And before they had the chance to call for help, scream, or do anything else, the librarian caught them, Harry still with his hands wrapped around the body in a macabre embrace...


	29. Uneasy Alliances

**askasknot: Temper is often glossed over in some modern stories, or seen as cool. I'm more a fan of the classics. Though Valeria isn't as bad as Heracles where temper is concerned, it will be a real problem for her.**

 **ro781727: Yep, poor Penny. And Valeria has to do with every event in this story that doesn't go as per canon - that's the story's premise. Small acts, even differences of attitude and character, can have profound effects. And then there are the few but very stupid things she does that have enormous impacts - you guys have pointed out a couple of them in reviews already. Intelligence doesn't negate inexperience.**

 **"UzumakiNarutoLover: Valeria in Ravenclaw? With her level of ambition and disregard for authority? As for dark, dark she can do.**

 **Disclaimer: All the cool stuff in Harry Potter belong to JK Rowling. Thgat's why regardless of how cool this story might be (or not), it is totally free.**

 **...**

The sense of freedom and boundless possibilities offered by the Cloak of Invisibility buoyed Valeria's feelings despite the recent attack on Penelope Clearwater, a Ravenclaw sixth-year prefect. In her not-so-humble opinion, Harry's disuse of the magical artifact approached criminal proportions; had such a marvelous thing been hers alone, she'd be wearing it as often as she could get away with it. It simply offered so many opportunities - such as the current weekend excursion.

The ancient horror guarding the castle's gates, under whose gimlet eye students of third to seventh year endured only thanks to signed parental permission, proved a ridiculously easy hurdle to overcome with the Cloak's help. Then again Filch, for all he was the dread of every lawbreaker that passed through Hogwarts in the last twenty years, was only a squib. That he managed on intimidation and misanthropy alone what powerful wizards like Professor Snape could not was a testament to his tenacity and deviousness - and the gullibility of the student body. Which only serves to show evil has as much power as stupidity allows it to.

Philosophical musings aside, sneaking into Hogsmeade was simply cool. She'd probably be doing it even without the current situation demanding it, especially given the kind of doors it opened. She wouldn't be the first student to do so given the amount and variety of illicit products smuggled into the castle all year round - Filch's list approached five hundred such items - which only made it more surprising that neither Harry nor Ron had thought to do the same. Especially after the incident with the flying car. But first things first; even with the cover afforded by the Cloak, not taking more precautions was plain stupid.

 _"Engorgio, engorgio, engorgio, engorgio..."_

Under Hagrid's tutelage last year she'd managed to pull off the Engorgement Charm nonverbally. With her current targets being herself and all her clothing however, she could not afford any mistakes. The stretching sensation all over her body indicated all was going well... until she managed to give herself a painful, if temporary, wedgie. Quickly repeating the charm on the one article of clothing she'd forgotten, she sighed in relief as the change was completed. Engorgement spells were charms rather than transfigurations because, contrary to appearances, they didn't physically change the target's size. Much like the more complex space expansion charms, they altered dimensional relationships. Also like expansion charms, mistakes could and often did result in violent reversals of the alteration... with the affected targets exploding messily.

Her dismal size was one thing of many in need of disguise before she ventured out into the village in plain sight of everyone. Changing her hair, eyes and skin tone to something darker was just as important, but far easier. But for the last change, her ability in Charms was not enough. This is where the Aging Potion came in. Twenty-four drops; less than a small sip but it had to be measured correctly. Nausea followed even as her loose robes, enlarged just a bit more than her body for precisely that moment, tightened across her chest and hips, sleeves and hem crawled several inches higher, her boots fit snugly, and her jaws and cheeks ached as her facial structure shifted noticeably.

The six-foot-tall late-teen witch with the black hair, olive skin and brown eyes that came out from under the Cloak a few minutes later was totally unrecognizable as one Valeria Campbell, second-year Slytherin student. She ignored the students milling around and visiting such silly shoppes as Honeydukes or Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop - even the sixth and seventh year boys covertly checking her out - and made for the near-dilapidated inn and pub at the far end of the village.

The bar at the Hog's Head comprised one small, very dirty, and dingy room in perpetual twilight. The windows were encrusted with so thick a layer of filth that barely any light came in and the few candles still burning upon the ancient-looking wooden tables were outnumbered five-to-one by the burned out stubs left from many previous days and nights. There was such a layer of dirt and caked soil one could barely tell there was a floor at all, and the many wooden chairs and tables were so worn and rotten it was a miracle they were still standing. Valeria boldly strode inside, her green dress and still-young and open face clashing mightily with the concealing black robes and hoods the few patrons wore. Appearances as always were deceiving however, and the Slytherin witch would bet she had the better disguise, moreso for not looking like a disguise at all.

"Five galleons for two uses of your fireplace." She told the aging, grey haired barman idly rubbing a stained glass with a dirty rug. Both of them being equally filthy, she assumed the only purpose of the action was for him to appear busy while in reality he kept an eye on his patrons and their business. Smart.

"What for?" The tall, old man demanded gruffly. She could not decide whether he reminded her more of fan-made sketches of Gandalf, or a dirtier but more honest Albus Dumbledore.

"Not asking questions is included in the price." She stated and pulled five golden coins from her purse. At nearly a hundred times the price of a butterbeer - more like forty for this overpriced pit - it was more than generous for something that took a few seconds. "One now, one in two hours."

"Whatever." He agreed, still gruffly. Without further ado, she stepped into the fire while throwing a pinch of Floo Powder and proclaiming her destination.

 _"Knockturn Alley!"_

 **...**

"This is a rather odd design." The older wizard said in his customary oily way as he examined the parchment carefully. "Expensive, too. Are you sure only those materials will do?"

"Would I be here if that weren't the case?" Valeria rolled her currently-brown eyes at Borgin's undisguised greed. "Mister Borgin, don't insult my spellcasting skills."

"Young lady, you wound me! I'd never dream of doing that to one of my cust-..." He immediately shut up at the appearance of a dark red flame in her open palm. In Valeria's experience, wandless magic was rare and unusual enough to be thought of as a mark of power, even though it was generally weaker than casting with a wand.

"You were considering whether you could cheat on materials and get away with it." She stated in a bored tone. "Why you obliquely hinted to it in my presence I cannot imagine, though I suspect our relative ages played a part." She fed a bit of anger into the fire and it grew by two inches then reached almost... hungrily in Borgin's direction. For whatever reason, her little grandstanding seemed to terrify the older wizard. Good. "Both of these constitute insults to my intelligence, mister Borgin. In my experience, the only reason for such between Dark wizards would be lack of faith in another's magical ability." She stared at him and finished flatly. "I find your lack of faith... disturbing." Given Borgin's clientelle she doubted he'd get the reference. She could have done the choking part, too, but it would be impolite; she had to work with the man, after all.

"But d-dragonhide? Anti-jinx varnish? And then you want me to enchant it?" He hesitated but decided for honesty. "I am not sure whether I can manage it."

"If you'd focused more on the details rather than your sin of preference you'd have noticed the plan calls only for the outer layer to be enchanted." She frowned and with a bit of effort forced the flame to subside. "As long as the outer layer's coverage is complete, the interior's resistance to enchantments shouldn't matter. Said resistance is, after all, the whole point of the design."

"It will be expensive." Borgin insisted; you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Knowing that, Valeria had come prepared. The small vial she retrieved from her purse and placed upon the table looked innocuous enough. Clear glass with even clearer content, barely enough quantity to quench one's thirt... had it been mere water.

"That can't be what it looks like." Borgin said with a frown. "You can count in your hands the people who can brew it in Britain. One's in Ministry employ, two are in Azkaban, one's in hiding, three are licensed and won't sell, and the last is in Hogwarts."

"Curious. At a similar level of difficulty with Polyjuice, one would expect anyone with a NEWT in Potions to be able to manage it." Which only meant it had been really, really hard. After the month-long slow stew, only a tiny amount of working potion had been the result for a much greater quantity of ingredients. She'd chosen it over Polyjuice because the latter didn't vary in final quantity depending on your skill. Rather, its duration per dose was affected; from ten minutes for a barely completed potion to twelve hours for the best result possible. She wanted to be capable of half the maximum effect before she spent a month-long effort on it. Besides, Polyjuice wasn't illegal

"Yes, because an hours-long ministry examination can test one's skill in a month-long process. Few students bother with such potions even once." Mister Borgin said with disgust. He examined the vial under the light and cast a revealing charm on it. Satisfied with the results, he vanished the potion so quickly down one of his pockets Valeria could have sworn he'd used magic to do it. "And you brewed it yourself? Well, this changes things. Indeed it does." The odious little wizard rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

"Mister Borgin, my current... circumstances don't allow for uninterrupted brewing." She interrupted and the Dark wizard deflated. "Providing you with potions beyond what would cover the cost of my request might not be feasible. Should that change though, I would expect half of the resulting profit margin as payment, once materials are accounted for."

"Oh, certainly. That's more than fair." His mousey eyes gleamed at the potential profits. "And what about your... device? What is it for?"

"That's for me to know, mister Borgin." She shot over her shoulder as she walked towards the exit. "Just make sure to have it ready in three weeks' time."

 **...**

The once co-owner of Borgin and Burkes considered the design before him carefully. It was doable all right, and it should work as expected. Oh, he'd needled the young witch with his questions, denials, and apparent incomprehension but it had all been part of the usual haggling. He had guessed the device's most probable use right away - and was rather surprised such a simple yet elegant solution had not come up before. Using the plans as his own though... too dangerous.

For all her base shrewdness, the girl had been naive, easily deflected, and lacked any business acumen whatsoever. But a goblin axe was no less lethal for not being as subtle as a scalpel; he knew that well. He'd used one to "inherit" this very shop from his onetime partner Caractakus Burke after all. And what his newest client had almost unleashed in his shop without a care in the world...

He wondered what dear Caractakus would make of her. The old man had once hired a young man of similar character after all, though that one had had a silken glove to hide the iron fist underneath. Not for the last time he wistfully remembered the good old times and wished he had not had to get rid of his old friend. When his partner's deteriorating mental health had him follow in the footstepts of his squib cousin William however, he had to go. Abducting muggles off the street and rendering them for materials was bad for business if you couldn't cover your own tracks.

Oh well, no use crying over spilt potion. His generation was fading, the next two had been pruned by the War, but the newest crop had only just arrived. He only had to wait and see what they would do in turn...

 **...**

"Did you get it?" Ron asked impatiently as the six of them met in the same empty classroom they'd used for dueling practice last year.

"Who did you take me for, Weasley?" Valeria demanded as she handed over the ring. Ron wore it and his hair immediately turned a dull brown. More slowly, the red of his skin was replaced with paler white and his eyes turned blue. Harry, using the second ring, turned his hair a pale blond like Draco Malfoy's, and his normally emerald green eyes into a more common black. With a bit of makeup from Tracey's kit, he hid his scar too.

"Whoa!" Ron said when Daphne provided a mirror. "We're bloody unrecognizable!" Tracey giggled, and Neville couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"Only as long as you keep your mouth shut, Weasley." Daphne said with a smirk, and Valeria had to agree.

"Thank you! So! Much!" Harry was all but jumping with excitement. "Now we can avoid the ravens and badgers in the hallways. I can't believe they're accusing us for what happened to Penelope Clearwater!"

"Yes, Harry. People can be judgemental idiots." She smiled sweetly at him. "Maybe you should remember that next time, huh?" The Boy-Who-Lived had the decency to blush with embarassment and mumble an apology inaudibly. "Now, about your Cloak."

"Oh, you can have it whenever I'm not using it." He said immediately.

"Very generous, Harry. But you will be using it." She unfolded the silvery fabric, marveling at its lightness, texture, and polish. "It was your father's, was it not? A family heirloom, you said."

"Yes, Dumbledore returned it to me last Christmas." His eyes teared a bit. "Only thing... I have left from him."

"Curious." She took out her wand and pointed it at the Cloak.

 _"Specialis Revelio!"_

No effect; even the Diary had shown something under the magic-revealing charm, after she'd put enough will behind her casting. But she'd half-suspected such a result already. She passed the Cloak on to Harry and nodded for him to use it.

 _"Specialis Revelio!"_

Nope, no active magic showing from the ring Harry wore while it was under the Cloak.

 _"Colovaria! Wingardium Leviosa! Accio! Depulso! Reducio! Evanesco! Aperio Caecus! Homenum Revelio!"_

"What was all that?" Harry said, his head appearing from behind the Cloak and seemingly floating in mid-air on its own. Ron and Tracey were looking on curiously as well but Neville and Daphne's eyes had gone round like saucers.

"Do you even realise what you're wearing, Harry?" Valeria said, voice shaking after casting several spells rapidly, some of which beyond second-year level. "Your cloak can't be made to change color, levitated, summoned, banished, shrunk, vanished, or forced into visibility. While it's possible I messed the harder spells up..." Doubtful. "...they should have done at least something. That your family heirloom is unaffected is... impressive." The Presence-Revealing Charm worked against it though. Still, the spells on that piece of clothing had to be very strong... no wonder the Magic-Revealing Charm didn't work.

"But... it's a family heirloom." Harry said, confused. "It's supposed to be powerful, right?"

"It's a family heirloom..." Daphne mused. She and Neville stared at each other. "Weasley, the two of you rode an invisible car, right? One your father enchanted?" The entire school had heard that story, of course. Its morale? That Valeria really didn't want to be on the receiving end of one of Molly Weasley's howlers.

"What of it?" The no-longer-redhead said defensively.

"It's invisibility broke, Weasley. That's why you were seen." The blonde Slytherin witch said with an air of explaining simple concepts to a particularly dull child. "Most such spells do, given time. An invisibility cloak that lasted long enough to become a heirloom? That's as rare as a fire bewitched to burn forevermore, maybe a step below turning lead into gold."

The strategy session they'd been planning on had to be postponed after that. Ron spent over half an hour telling them all what he would do with such a powerful Cloak while changing his hair through various colours, Harry had a faraway look and was too deep in thought to be responsive, and Valeria herself was thinking up ways to copy the enchantments - never mind being nowhere near strong enough for such a feat. The original idea, to share the Cloak among them so as to maximize the hours they could sneak around and search for clues on the attacks, she only remembered after the boys had left.

"OK Campbell, spill." Daphne said when the three of them were alone.

"Why must I always have something to spill?" She asked her friend. "What am I, an aqueduct?"

"You made color-changing rings last year." Tracey pointed out. "Why would you need to sneak into Hogsmeade for them?"

"Now that we've proven we're not Gryffindors to your satisfaction..." Daphne said icily, "How about sharing?"

"Whyever did I make friends?" Valeria mock-lamented. "They're all so needy!"

"I'll show you needy, you manipulative, secretive, floozy!" The pureblood princess threatened with a raised wand, but they could see the smile in her face.

Half an hour later Valeria was still collapsed on the floor in ignominious defeat. With all the excitement that evening she'd forgotten to renew her Shield Charm and the other two girls had noticed. So thirty seconds into the mock-fight and while Daphne had her distracted, Tracey had nailed her from behind with a trio of expertly cast Tickling Hexes, messing with her concentration too much for her to pull off a counter-curse. Then the two of them focused on their own duel, leaving her giggling and unable to even get angry about it. Not that she would - showing her how her arrogance could lead to mistakes was exactly what friends did.

But couldn't they have left her with a shred of dignity in the process?


	30. Teachers Great and Small

**EternalCosmicSailorSaturn: Oh, the 'device' will come up soon enough, don't worry.**

 **ro781727: Blame her parents for the deviousness/paranoia. And meeting a not-so-dead Dark Lord in her first year of school.**

 **How910: I hope you like today's chapter then!**

 **DaughterofTerpsichore: The plot has been brewing for a couple of years. As I write though, the occasional change that surprises even me crops up. You never know when you'll come up with a better idea when writing.**

 **...**

"Today you will attempt to brew the Deflating Solution." Professor Snape announced as he joined the Gryffindor and Slytherin second years in the Potions classroom. "Abysmal as your brewing skills have proven to be there will be no point deductions for such a difficult task as, I've been informed, I must put at least some effort into not ruining the point system." There were a lot of whispered comments and much rejoicing at that announcement, primarily from the Gryffindors. The trio of Slytherin girls did not relax; they knew that, like any predator, their Head of House was at its most dangerous when he was quiet, not when he blustered and raged.

"On a much happier note, our next lesson will be on the Swelling Solution, to which today's potion is quite obviously the antidote. Thus, not brewing a satisfactory potion today might have an... adverse effect when we do our first practical application next time." Professor Snape smiled. "Nonlethal though it may be, having one's head swell to trollish proportions would negatively impact many school activities - as I'm sure some of you can already attest." His gaze drifted towards Ron and Harry for a moment but then, with a spring in his step, he made the complex instructions appear on the blackboard.

Second and third year Potions had fewer actual brews in the curicculum than first year, but a lot more in ingredient preparation, basic theory, reaction tables and post-brewing tasks. Valeria had been initially surprised and angry at how the Ministry had reduced the number of mandatory potions to a mere four for those two years, but once she'd started working on some far more complex brews realized just how much of the early theory applied directly to them. In addition many of the things they would learn to make in class, while not actual potions, utilized the same basic knowledge. Essences and extracts of single base ingredients such as Murtlap and Dittany were just as useful as most mid-level elixirs, standardized ingredient mixtures both had their own properties and could be used to make complex potions much faster, and the techniques for curing, harvesting and processing plants and animal parts correctly might be basic but still important for anyone who wouldn't take Care of Magical Creatures or Advanced Herbology later.

The students themselves had changed considerably from their first year, in Valeria's opinion. Draco, Pansy and their posse were still favored for political reasons of course, but favoritism could not a perfect potion make and Draco at least had improved. Theo Nott and Blaize Zabini were quiet and indifferent as always, but their work had become consistent. Daphne was falling a bit behind, despite Tracey's and Valeria's help; her upbringing had not included anything messy (except for dueling) and her uncertainty was showing. On the Gryffindor side, Harry and Ron were having problems. Both of them performed well if left alone but as soon as they drew Professor Snape's attention, they invariably made something melt, explode, change color or go rancid. Neville was at a similar level, with less frequent but more impressive mishaps. The three girls had been helping them and the Longbottom scion had improved immensely, but Harry and Ron were limited by their attitude. However many times Valeria or Tracey had explained that having a patient's life depend on your antidote, or adapting to the fluid brewing of higher-level potions would need at least as much focus as resisting Professor Snape's taunts, the two boys were adamant in their refusal to see reason. Parvati Patil's contest with Valeria for first place in class was also being disrupted. Fay Dunbar, one of the rare Gryffindor girls who was as quiet as the quietest Slytherins, was proving to be somewhat of a prodigy.

Finishing her potion first, with Fay and Draco tied for second place, the blonde Slytherin witch scrambled for the exit, to her friends' surprise. Time for phase two had come and she really wanted to see if she could get Lockhart's surprisingly good idea to work with a letter from a "good friend" fixing its most obvious faults.

 **...**

 _"Have you uncovered anything yet?"_

"Not unless more clues magically turned up since the last time you asked." Valeria was working through something a little more dangerous than her usual spellcasting and did not welcome interruptions - especially not in the form of a so-called Diary that radiated a compulsion to read its messages as soon as they appeared. "I swear Tom, if I didn't know better I'd think you were a girl." And she really didn't; she'd never met a Tom Riddle, if that was even his real name. "Making conversation, asking about feelings, worries and everyday activities, trying to talk me through my problems..."

To the water in the boiling cauldron she added Knotgrass picked on Ostara, the Vernal Equinox, and one of her hairs, then Fluxweed harvested during the First Quarter of the Moon. Then in was Knotgrass picked on Litha, the Summer Solstice, and three drops of sweat, with Fluxweed harvested during Full Moon.

 _"I worry about you, you know. What with the attacks, and House rivalries, and how secretive you can be."_

Valeria didn't bother with an answer this time, ignoring the mild compulsion. Ever since she'd finally discovered what the magic aura she'd revealed radiating from the Diary actually did, she'd been practicing on fighting it. It was good for building up mental resistance and if it made Tom bloody Riddle realise she wasn't in his beck and call, all the better. So, she concentrated on her work. Raising her wand towards her eyes, its lit tip forcing out some tears as she held her eyes open by will and countless hours of makeup practice, she added Knotgrass picked on Mabon, the Autumnal Equinox, Fluxweed gathered under the Last Quarter of the Moon, and three teardrops. Then, drawing her wand across her left palp, she winced and muttered the Severing Charm. Knotgrass and Fluxweed for Yule and the New Moon respectively were added, seven drops of blood finishing the process.

Initially clear, the mixture had become black, white, yellow and now red as it went through the four phases. Now that it settled into a slow simmer it was turning a dull silver, almost identical to unicorn blood. Sighing contentedly, she took it off the fire and let it cool, careful not to add any more of her body fluids or parts into the mixture. A few taps of her wand healed her cut, but her aching eyes and the exhaustion of running under the sun long enough to work up a sweat despite the Winter cold outside would not go away that easily. It was worth it though.

"OK Tom, we can talk now."

 _"After ignoring my questions, giving me the silent treatment when I say I worry about you, and disappearing on me for an hour? Girls are weird."_

"I was working on a delicate alchemical process!" She snarled, her magic pen transcribing her angry words. "Should I have ruined it due to your lack of patience?"

 _"Oh!"_ A good thirty seconds of silence and then more words appeared. _"Alchemy was a sixth year elective in my time. How are you taking it early?"_

"Don't play dumb. As if making something like this Diary wasn't way more advanced than your standard lessons too." Had he made it when still a student, it would have been an amazing achievement; the book was almost as resistant to her revealing spells as Harry's Cloak, and likewise resisted all other spells she'd tried so far. But she doubted any student would have ever managed it - one more little lie to the quagmire of deception that was Tom Riddle.

 _"Guilty as charged, my dear. So, what were you making?"_

" _Primum ens Melissae_ with the old Spagyric recipe. Waiting twenty-one days for the halfway point of Polyjuice brewing that results in the same would take too long." She looked at the silvery mixture again, to reassure herself it was still there. It had been as quick and simple to brew as lifting twice her weight without magic or tools - and about as easy.

 _"Ah, I see. Clever girl. The symptoms of the attacks as you described them..."_

"...are between the Killing Curse and rigor mortis." She finished. "Seeing if spiritual revitalization will have any effects on the sole survivor might be important." She'd found it expedient to tell him of Penelope's survival. A bit of digging in old Prophet editions from fifty years ago had revealed details on three survivors that had been temporarily petrified. Reporting that as Penelope's "condition" had helped keep her untrustworthy companion in the dark while making use of his expertise.

 _"I suppose a trip to St. Mungo's is in your near future then?"_

"During the Yule break, probably. Too busy now." She put the completed elixir into her purse, tidied up the abandoned classroom and cleared away all evidence of her work. Her bed beckoned now. Or perhaps the shower first? Her tired muscles and foggy brain were amenable to either choice.

 _"Hmm, it will cut down on our private lessons."_ Tom wrote even as she picked the Diary up to store it. _"How about one now? Make up for future lost time?"_

"Do you have any idea how tired I am?" She growled and the pen wrote it out. Unfortunately, it couldn't carry over emotions.

 _"Because you'll always be well rested if an emergency comes up?"_ Riddle's words somehow looked smug. No fair - how could he put such an impression into them? _"Besides, I'll be teaching you the Eradication Spell. I remember you wanting to learn something stronger, no? If you're old enough for Alchemy, you're old enough for it."_

"OK, I'm in." She said through gritted teeth. "But one day, I'll find a way to murder you repeatedly."

 _"Anytime, dearest."_

 **...**

Well over a hundred students from all Houses had gathered in the Great Hall that day. The two near-lethal attacks had scared everyone, especially the one on Penelope Clearwater. If a student could be attacked in the Hogwarts Library, who had only one exit and was always under the dread gaze of Madam Pince, few places in the castle would be safe. That Harry and Ron had been the only ones found where nobody could get to or leave unseen (or so the students thought) had contributed to the malicious rumors about the two boys. Thus, a significant percentage of the sudent population had turned up for the new Duelling Club.

"I hope it's Professor Snape that teaches us." Daphne said. "He fought in the war, you know. On both sides too, if rumors are true."

"Blonder here has a crush on our Head of House." Tracey stage-whispered. "It's the nose, you know. Hook, bait, you get the idea."

"I do not!" Their friend denied, scandalized. A few girls nearby giggled. "And why are you calling me 'blonder'?"

"Because Val is blonde and you're blonder than she is?" More giggles accompanied that comment.

"I hate to dissapoint you two, but I'm fairly sure it'll be Lockhart." Valeria interjected before jinxes flew. "After all, he is the defense Professor."

"You'd like that wouldn't you, mudblood?" Came a very annoying voice from behind. "We've seen how you look at him in class, talk about him with your friends behind his back."

"Draco, why are you in Slytherin?" She asked, not for the first time. "Of course I'd like Lockhart to teach us. Unlike you, he's subtle, good at unusual magics, knows how to work the crowd and be likable, and is easy on the eyes. That only means, also unlike you, that I'm intelligent - not that I fancy him."

"Why you little-!"

Malfoy's furious and probably dimwitted retort was interrupted by the arrival of both Professors Snape and Lockhart. This satisfied all parties except Malfoy, and maybe the Gryffindors. Approaching the long dueling platform that had been set at the center of the Great Hall from either end, the Professors introduced themselves. or rather, Lockhart made a brief, almost curt introduction for both of them, then got to the point.

"So here we all are in this Duelling Club, you to learn how to defend yourselves, Professor Snape and I to teach you. Duelling can help you defend yourselves from the worst, the vilest and the ugliest dregs of the wizarding world - and makes for quite a good sport if I say so myself." He gave them all that brilliant and probably fake smile. "Unfortunately, the dashing poses and rigid rules of formal Duelling, awesome though they may make one look, are unlikely to help you survive real encounters with enemies. That is why we are going to do something a bit more... practical."

Whispers from a hundred mouths flooded the Great Hall before Professor Snape restored order by simply launching a mini-thunderclap from the tip of his wand.

"Thank you, Professor Snape." Lockhart nodded. "As I was saying, there are only two ways to win most fights you'll find yourselves in. One of them is cleverness and misdirection - as everyone who has had one of my classes certainly knows. The other is thinking and acting on your feet, before your opponent does. As the former however serves best those with extraordinary talent and wit - such as yours truly..." Laughter and applause followed for a few moments. "...we'll be focusing on the latter. Our first lesson will be on dodging and aiming."

"May I suggest a practical demonstration so the students know what to do?" Her Head of House asked and the fraudulent Defense Professor replied according to the script. "Of course. May I see some volunteers, everyone? I'm afraid my combat spells have few visible components and would not work for a demonstration."

"Naturally." The Potions Master conceded without missing a beat. "How about Miss Patil, Mister Potter, Mister Malfoy and Miss Campbell?"

"Perfect!" Lockhart readily agreed with a smile. That _hadn't_ been on the script. Not waiting for volunteers, Professor Snape had hand-picked the students with the biggest issues in the second year. Politics again - wouldn't it have been better to select someone older? Not that she couldn't wipe the floor with either Malfoy or Patil if it came to that - she doubted either of them could pierce her defenses.

"Ladies first!" The ever-smiling fraud said as if doing them a great favor. "Nondamaging first-year spells only, girls. The objective is to hit your opponent as often as possible, while dodging their own spells. You ready?" Well, crap. _Protego_ certainly wasn't a first-year spell. Neither were most of the spells in her arsenal. Any advantage in power she had over Parvati had just been negated.

"Three, two, one..."

 _"Petrificus Totalus!"_

 _"Thyrsus!"_

By the time she'd cast the Full-Body Bind, Parvati had sent a Stinging Jinx her way and was already dodging. She tried to avoid it, but it caught her in the ribs. Patil's only mistake had been to pause to see her reaction. Of course, after being stung so many times in practice last year, the pain from such a weak spell cast by a second-year barely registered.

 _"Everte Statum!"_

 _"ThyrsAAAH!"_

Being quicker on the mark this time, her Knockback Jinx had hit the other girl mid-cast, throwing her back like a punch in the gut. Patil wasn't much of a fighter, despite her good marks and...

 _"Colloshoo!"_

The Stickfast Hex glued her shoes to the dueling platform, proving that Patil shouldn't be underestimated. Oh well, she asked for it.

 _"Mimblewimble! Everte Statum! Everte Statum!_ _ _Everte Statum!__ _ _ _Everte...__ "_

This time she didn't stop once the Tongue-Tying Jinx prevented Parvati from striking back. She kept up a rapid barrage of Knockback Jinxes, trying to throw the other girl off the platform. Maybe one out of three landed, battering Patil a bit. A few bruises never hurt anyone and besides, she kept dancing away from most of them. She could choose to surrender at any time.

 _"Everte Statum!"_

The Jinx hit her squarely but did not throw her back; being stuck on the ground prevented that. She took the full force of the blow and gasped. What the hell? When had the Tongue-Tying Jinx ran out? Of course, she didn't have time to think about it; a second direct hit hurled her on her back, her legs still stuck.

"T-Tittillando!"

She barely managed to pull off the Tickling Hex, winning her a few moments of safety from return fire. Her head was spinning and given her position she wouldn't be getting up before Patil could get rid of the attack. Nothing for it then; she hurled a few more Tickling Hexes in Patil's direction and either the other girl was very ticklish or a second one hit and the effects stacked; her opponent dissolved into a laughing heap on the floor. Whispering the counter-curse to unstick her shoes - she got it on the third try - she climbed to her knees, then her feet. Many of the students were whispering now.

"Twenty points from Gryffindo, miss Patil!" Snape roared as he waved his wand to finish any lasting spells.

"What?!" The Indian girl demanded. "But..."

"Not you, your twin!" He pointed at an identical girl in Ravenclaw uniform. "And detention. Whispering that counter-curse on you on the sly didn't help you win your duel, Miss Patil. It cheated you out of a valuable lesson and Miss Campbell of a painless victory. You're both lucky I'm not your Head of House."

"And on that happy announcement," Lockhart chose that moment to intercede "Maybe Mister Potter and Mister Malfoy could have their duel too?"

The boys' duel contained even more cheating than hers and Patil's had. They both cast ahead of the count -Draco naturally being the first to do so- and tried to pummel each other instead of dodging and returning fire as they should have. And then Draco somehow pulled off a fifth-year snake-conjuring charm and things got a great deal worse.

 **...**

"That was horrible." Tracey said as the six of them had retreated from the Great Hall amid a lot of booing against Harry. "Val getting trounced and then the snake incident..."

"I did not get trounced! The twins cheated!" Valeria heatedly denied.

"Now now, Val. They wouldn't have managed to beat you up like that if you weren't your usual, arrogant self." Daphne patted her shoulder as Valeria leaned against the wall. She should have gone to the infirmary but there were bigger fish to fry than a few bruised ribs. "And you!" Her blonde friend turned to Harry and demanded. "Why didn't you ever tell us you were a Parseltongue? Having the ability to talk to snakes, I mean." She finished as she saw his blank expression.

"Never came up, I guess." The boy said ignorantly. "What's the big deal? I bet plenty of wizards can do it."

"Nope!" Tracey said in her standard mocking way. "Supposedly only Dark, evil wizards can, if you believe the rumors. That Salazar Slytherin, Herpo the Foul, You-Know-Who and others of similar persuation did, doesn't help matters. Guess how the Hogwarts rumor mill will react to that, with the Chamber of Secrets now open?"

"But... But I'm not the Heir of Slytherin!" Harry denied just as uselessly as Valeria had a moment ago. "I'm a bloody Gryffindor for Merlin's sake!"

"The truth is irrelevant, Potter." Daphne said with the barest hints of sympathy in her voice. "What other believe is more important in the short run. You'll do well to remember that."


	31. Yule Terror

**Urazz: I wouldn't say put in his place. More like, temporarily smacked down. After all, one of the reasons he didn't have any character growth in canon for, like, five books was because nobody in his House stood up to him. With Valeria as both a challenge and a target...**

 **ro781727: Flitwick also has goblin blood. Goblins despise cheaters and thieves. Dunno about McGonagal though. No matter how Snape docked points, there was no proof the girl on the dueling stage cheated or knew of it in advance, only that her sister helped her.**

 **Lots of things happening in this chapter. The title felt appropriate, IMHO. (runs off before any angry readers can begin the witch-hunt)**

 **Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling. You can tell it doesn't belong to me from how the horror elements are hidden or glossed over. Also, from the miniscule size of my bank account.**

 **...**

"This is totally cool. Why didn't we think of it before, Harry?" Ron asked as they approached Hogsmeade over the heavy snow.

"Because you're a bunch of Gryffindor pansies?" Tracey returned question with question.

"The purpose of an Invisibility Cloak is stealth." Valeria reminded them. "You're doing it wrong."

"As if anyone would notice in this weather." Ron said. "Relax, the plan is foolproof."

"Yeah, no comments on being stealthy from the six-foot amazonian brunette, please." Tracey added.

Getting those two together had been one of her biggest mistakes for the year. If riding Harry's Nimbus 2000 together under the Cloak didn't end up in disaster, their joint efforts would eventually drive her and Harry stark raving mad. At least the Boy-Who-Lived understood a bit about covert missions and was not speaking. It was that or him having already been demented by the constant bickering of their two companions.

Unfortunately, they'd had no choice in the matter. Daphne had returned home for the holidays along with the vast majority of the student population, and Neville absolutely refused to accompany them to St. Mungo's for some personal reason. Harry and Valeria, having grown up in the muggle world, had had no idea where the wizarding hospital was, and neither Ron nor Tracey would agree to be left behind. Their four-person group wasn't a covert mission; it was a bloody circus!

"Hey Val." Harry called out to be heard over the other two. "How are we going to London? If we're going by Floo, why not use a fireplace in the castle? Breaking into a teacher's office couldn't be that hard with the Cloak. Especially if it's Lockhart's." Harry's comments reminded her that not all boys were bumbling fools. Not all the time, at least.

"We don't want anyone to know we went through and they're certainly monitored." She aimed her own rather rickety broomstick towards the Hog's Head. She didn't have an invisibility cloak of her own but with her disguise, it wouldn't matter. Use the Floo in a shady bar a few times, have people there hear you call out a less than reputable destination, and your assumed identity was suddenly welcome on the other side of the legal fence.

"In here, quick." She landed, opened the last compartment of her magical trunk, and subtly nodded for her three invisible companions to fly in as she covered them by depositing her own broom.

"You sure?" whispered Tracey in her ear as they hovered next to her.

"It's rated for one full adult, indefinite stay. Three twelve-year-olds will be fine for an hour." She whispered back testily. Why must everyone question her plans, lately? "Besides, you hit it off with Wisleay just fine, didn't you? Don't you want his company any more?"

"Shut up!"

"Oi! I'm here, ya know!"

Fortunately, Harry had the presence of mind to fly them in before anyone noticed or overheard anything. She closed the compartment, lifted the magically featherlight trunk and entered the dilapidated old pub with confidence. A few of the usual patrons nodded in greeting and she nodded back. Magical petty criminals were a welcoming bunch.

"Morning, Aberforth." She said to the barman. Despite the obvious similarity, it was still hard to think of the old wizard as Dumbledore's younger brother. It was even stranger to know they shared views on the meddling Headmaster. Some things had come out the one time she'd tried some Firewhiskey and since then they'd been on fairly friendly terms. He'd even reduced his Floo prices to one Galleon - still exorbitant for just Floo, but pretty good for no questions asked.

"Morning, lass. The usual?" He nodded to his fireplace, not the liquor cabinet. She raised an eyebrow, directed his attention to her magical trunk, and he nodded twice. Good, only two Galleons for both her and the "cargo". This would be quick -

"The lady can have whatever she wants." A voice she knew well said from behind. "It's all on me!" She winced and turned around. Sure enough, behind her stood Gilderoy Lockhart. How could she have possibly missed him coming in? And what was he doing here, of all places?! She tried to find some way to get rid of him without anyone noticing. Maybe if...

"...of course, we're friends!" Lockhart was saying. Not immediately rebuffing him had been a mistake; he was already well on his way of getting the two of them a table and some drinks. But why was he so interested? The two of them had never met, not in Valeria's current form. So why...

"...the Firewhiskey is good, no?" Gilderoy said and laughed. The two of them were sitting on their table, sipping their second cup and talking. Well, Gilderoy talked and she listened. "This pub here is a hidden gem. Best drinks and stew I've ever had. Far better than that 'Broomsticks' inn. Plus, the barman doesn't have a problem with me here." He prattled along while she tried to work things through. The Firewhiskey didn't help; her currently aged and enlarged body had far greater tolerance for the stuff but her head was already pounding. How much had she had? Couldn't have been only two cups. "And imagine meeting you here, of all places. My own best friend!"

Bloody hell. She'd totally forgotten about that. Feeding Lockhart some Unctuous Unction had been the simplest way to win the man's confidence. Unfortunately, magically making your target believe you his best friend regardless of who you were... no wonder he'd approached her despite her disguise. In class, she was a twelve year old girl. Logic fought against her being the hidden ally that was helping Lockhart outmaneuver Dumbledore's trap and knew many of his secrets. At best, it made her his favorite student. But an unknown and obviously shady woman in an obviously shady place? The fraud would put two and two together easily enough. He probably believed his strong sense of familiarity was due to his lost memories. Merlin, what a mess.

No wonder her head hurt.

 **...**

The problem with being a six-foot adult was that one was tall enough to snog Gilderoy Lockhart. Wait, WHAT?!

Valeria's thoughts reeled as she finally fought through the compulsion. And it was a strong one. Not resisting Lockhart taking charge back in the pub? Not noticing him using the refilling charm on her goblet until the Firewhiskey had worn her down enough for silent compulsions to work well? Ignoring the warning signs - headache, memory lapses - until too late? Following him to his bloody room? Disgust mingled with fury and terror: fury won.

The benefit of being a six-foot adult was that one was taller and stronger than blonde dandies that relied on their mastery of mental manipulation. Still too confused and unfocused to work magic - something Lockhart had probably intended, the slug - she had no problem reaching for his neck and squeezing. Realization came as late to him as it had to her; your best and confunded friend wasn't supposed to choke you, right? He fought, ineptly. Liquor and past experiences helped with the pain. When he no longer stuggled, she let him collapse in a boneless heap. Then promptly vomited all over him.

With Lockhart out, his compulsions were easier to fight through. A couple of minutes later, she'd found his wand and hers on the bedside table, scourgified the mess, and recovered some of her wits. The trunk! Where was her trunk? That was when the door slammed open and Aberforth Dumbledore barged in, wand in hand. At that very moment, she had no trouble believing he was the brother of Britain's most powerful wizard; he positively radiated power and menace.

"Lass, ye OK?" He asked, seeing Lockhart still lying on the room's floor.

"Think so." She winced again, the light from the open door hurting her eyes. "Have any sobering potions?"

"Downstairs. Free of charge." He sighed and stowed his wand away. "Had I noticed his compulsion... only had a feeling things didn't add up. Came to check on you and heard struggling. Get him good?"

"He'll live." She shot a Stunner at Lockhart. "Unfortunately, I have need of his services." She winced at how that sounded. Aberforth raised an eyebrow in question.

"Your brother hired him to out him as a fraud. Horrible plan, one more year of Defense wasted. Might get... students killed." She stared at the old man's blue eyes, so much like his brother's. He ran this pub, raised goats and harvested bezoars, dressed in near-rags. He didn't meddle or ask questions. And he'd come to help. "There's something you need to know. War is coming."

"It always is." The old wizard said with a hint of a smile as she poured a dose of forgetfulness potion down Lockhart's throat. Unfortunately, he wouldn't choke on it.

"True. But battles have already been fought. He uses _children."_ No reason to mention who 'he' was. "Last year, Lord bloody Voldemort was stopped by a bunch of first-years. This year, some Chamber of Secrets has been opened." Aberforth Dumbledore hissed vehemently. It frightened her just a bit.

"Are you involved?" he demanded, his grip on her wand arm painfully strong for such an old wizard.

"I'm trying to protect them." Technically true. She was among said children after all. "Will go see some of the victims. Maybe I'll see something the healers missed. Not many healers..."

"Are involved with the Dark Arts?" He snorted. "Can almost smell it on ye, lass. Moreso than my usual customers. Bad business it is. Maybe you should leave it for somebody else. What are you, seventeen? Eighteen? Bet you anything you're still a student in the old man's school."

Well, he had her there. At least he had no idea she was only a second-year. Unfortunately, she was a target. For Voldemort, the Heir of Slytherin, and whoever came out of the woodwork and involved themselves in this blood purity mess. And she wasn't the only one.

"Can't." Was the only thing she said. Old man Aberforth didn't judge. He escorted her downstairs, fed her a sobering potion and handed her a pinch of Floo powder. He even promised to take care of Lockhart.

What was she going to do with the slug? Even thinking about him had fury and loathing trying to strangle all rational thought. Her original plan, to 'discover' his misdeeds and get credit for outing him after a year of learning what he had to teach, had to go. Killing him, while tempting, had certain drawbacks as her research into Soul-Magic was indicating. Otherwise she'd be carrying his shrunken corpse in her purse already.

It wasn't a problem she could think through in her current condition. Leaving it for later, she stepped into the fireplace and stated her destination.

 **...**

Aberforth had been involved in his brother's shady business many times before. It always ended badly, got good people killed. That's why he'd left, last time. Turned his back on a bloody old fool's bloody campaign for the good of bloody Wizarding Britain and never looked back.

Could the lass be one of his brother's people? She was muggleborn, he was certain of it. A century of talking to people and even an old idiot like him could pick up a few things about reading them. Reminded her a bit of another lass that used to come here in her seventh year, accompanied by a fool of her own. No mind magic that time though. But they were both dead and gone. Like this one would be, he feared.

No, she couldn't be one of his brother's. Smelled of something mighty foul - a lot worse than those compulsions. Almost as foul as that bloke drinking with Hagrid last year. Albus would not touch the Dark Arts these days, the bloody hypocrite. At least he'd changed over the years. No more of his "greater good" nonsense. Problem was, even plain old Good got people killed. Should he say anything? No. Last time he told him about a spy, four good people were lost. Let him deal with his own mess. He'd wait, and watch. If the lass ever became a problem, he could always act.

Now, what to do about Lockhart? He'd tried to do something vile. Not being punished just because he failed didn't sit well with him, even if it had confirmed the lass wasn't evil. No self-respecting Dark Witch would let something like that go... unless she had something real ugly planned for him for later. But until that happier time... Aberforth had always been partial to goats. Useful animals, goats. Loyal, productive, providing the second-strongest magical antidote known. Perhaps Lockhart should get to know just how useful they were up close and personal...

 **...**

Hestia Jones was excited. Only a few years out of Hogwarts, just finished her hit-wizard training (no matter how loaded its name was, she still loved how exciting her job could be), and now a secret mission from Albus Dumbledore himself! Her sister would be green with envy! Let Gwenog ride her broom all she wanted; it was Hestia that would help the great wizard that had saved their family during the Wizarding War. And all she had to do for now was guard a room for a couple of days. How hard could it be? St Mungo's was a secure building, with dozens of trained wizards at hand and the Ministry and Auror Academy practically next door. Who was going to attack two patients in a coma? The mediwizards? The bereaved relatives? The girl in the green dress that looked like she still went to Hogwarts despite her height? She'd soon be done here, a few points higher in the great wizard's esteem than before. Then he'd give her better missions, maybe even invite her to join his not-so-secret Order? There were rumors about them in the Academy, how much they helped in the last war. That's what she wanted to do; help in the fight against Dark magic, save people's lives!

She never saw who cast the Full-Body Bind on her, locking her in place without anyone the wiser. They'd aimed for her head, struck from near the limits of her peripheral vision. Plus, they'd been invisible. Only moments later, she felt a hand reaching in the narrow gap between her immobile body and the wall. Their wand hidden from view, her attacker hit her with a weak Stunner at point-blank range and darkness followed. She never saw the girl in the green dress transfigure a button into pair of sunglasses and putting it on her to hide her condition from casual observers.

 **...**

"Bloody hell, Harry!" Ron exclaimed once they were all inside. "We just took out the captain of the Holyhead Harpies!"

"Who?" Asked Harry, perplexed.

"No, we didn't." Countered Tracey. "That was her sister, Hestia."

"How can you tell?" Ron demanded. "They're twins. Oh Merlin! We'll get caught and thrown into Azkaban for sure!"

"Oh please! As if a nationally famous Quidditch Captain could be here without a horde of fanboys and reporters trailing her." Tracey retorted scathingly. "You only want for her to have been the one here because then you'd have finally met your crush!"

"I don't have a crush on Gwenog Jones!" The redheaded menace whispered back furiously. At least he wasn't shouting yet.

"Sure you don't. You're a boy, aren't you?"

"If you two don't shut up, I'm hexing you to bits." Valeria threatened. Harry looked at her worriedly. Her skin was a bit pale even in her disguise, and her eyes were red. Had she been crying? Had something happened in the hour they'd been locked in the magical trunk? She looked exhausted, too.

"We're here on serious business, not for you to air your personal... problems." Ron and Tracey looked embarassed, as well they should. They were here to help Colin and the Clearwater girl. Even taking out the obvious guard (which had only been obvious to him once Tracey had pointed her out - the Slytherin girl was bloody perceptive) would only give them little time. St. Mungo's was a busy hospital; someone was bound to come in sooner or later.

Despite having had to spend an hour in an enclosed space with a girl who liked to point out his faults and how badly he'd done in the Philosopher's Stone fiasco last year, and Ron who liked to argue with said girl loudly and angrily, Harry would have done it all over again. The excitement of sneaking into several places he should not be in, the pounding of his heart as he used that idiot Lockhart's lessons to take out a grown witch, learning so many new things about the Wizarding World beyond Hogwarts, seeing all the spells and potions used in this mission, and realizing how far behind he and Ron were falling compared to other students in their year. That last he vowed to change as soon as he could. He'd practice casting and do his homework even if it killed him, because not doing it eventually would.

 _"Specialis Revelio!"_

Valeria was casting some spell he didn't know. She'd explained it would reveal and analyze traces of magic and existing spells. He saw no evidence of it working, so either no magic had been used on Colin or the Clearwater girl or something was hiding it, like with his Cloak. His assumption was proven wrong however, when his friend spoke in an exhausted voice. Maybe she should go to the hospital wing once they were back? The irony of being in the best magical hospital in Britain and not being able to use it was not lost on him.

"It's a curse. A really Dark and powerful curse." She looked from Colin to the Ravenclaw girl as if trying to decide something. "The healing spells and potions are fighting it but it will take a long time. Maybe over a year, in Colin's case - he's younger, weaker." She rummaged in that endless purse of hers, retrieving a vial of silver liquid. Harry could only imagine how useful such a purse could be. Had she gotten it from some contact of hers in Slytherin? Some of the other Slytherin girls had them, too. Maybe made it herself? Harry didn't know - perhaps he should ask? Valeria was his friend, wasn't she? She'd tell him. Probably. Maybe. Wait, silver liquid?

"Is that... unicorn's blood?" He asked her hesitantly. Did she want to curse the victims even more? Why would she do something so vile?

"No, Harry." She spoke tiredly again. "It is similar - weaker and without the drawbacks. Unicorn's blood would certainly revive them but then they'd be forever cursed." She frowned. "If others were in imminent danger and we knew they could help us find the culprit... no. Such a sacrifice isn't ours to decide for." Harry was glad for that. Slytherins were known for doing everything to achieve their goals. He liked Valeria but if she did something like that... he didn't know what he'd do.

"Wouldn't the healers have used it already?" Tracey asked, pointing at the vial.

"Normally, it takes a month to make and doesn't last long." The blonde witch explained. "They're probably brewing it but it isn't ready yet."

"Normally?" Ron asked, paying attention for once. Valeria didn't reply; she emptied about a third of the vial down the Ravenclaw girl's throat. Then she gave a bit more to Colin, leaving the vial half-empty.

"That's all they can handle right now." She recast her spell and a few others. "Slight improvement. If they'd taken it right after the attacks maybe..."

"If it's all we can do, it's all we can do. Now let's get out of here." Tracey said, showing the Slytherin trait of self-preservation. "We really don't want to be caught here, do we?"

 **...**

Like many of her days lately, this one had been totally exhausting. Sneaking off Hogwarts every so often, the Dueling club, lessons and homework, brewing illegal potions... she'd put another batch into slow stew only... yesterday was it? And trying new spells with both her friends and her private sessions with Tom. She was doing too many things. A few of today's events had not even sunk in yet. Her head was still pounding, too. Maybe she needed a good restorative potion and a whole weekend's sleep. Wait!

"Tracey, go on ahead." She said to the snarky brunette. She'd been needling her about her chosen disguise ever since they'd left the boys to climb to their tower. Apparently, the queen of Slytherin's rumor mill had not missed how the few boys and young men they'd passed by in Hogsmeade looked at her. Thank Morgana she had not learned about Lockhart! "I'll go see Madam Pomfrey. I think I'm coming down with something."

"About bloody time!" Her friend exclaimed. "If you hadn't mentioned it I'd have stunned you as soon as we arrived to the common room then gotten you there myself!"

"Yeah, yeah. As if you can cast a decent Stunner." She smiled but couldn't put any feeling into it. Too tired, probably. "Even Potter learned that faster than you and you know how little he practices."

"Don't make me hex you, Campbell!" She growled back. "And go see our resident medibitch. I'll check once I've had a warm bath. If you're late, there won't be any hot water left for you!"

Once Tracey was gone, she took out Tom's Diary and the still half-full vial of _Primum ens Melissae._

"Hey Tom, you there?" She asked, magical pen transcribing. "Mission accomplished."

"I'm always here for you, doll." Bloody annoying boy. If she ever got her hands on him... "How did it go? Did you go there, see and conquer?"

"Minor good results." She said, fantasies of strangling him in the back of her mind. "The curse on her was a nasty thing. Near-separation of essence from vessel. How she survived it... could she have been partially exposed?"

"Not against what we're suspecting." There was a long pause. "Are you certain about those results?"

"I'm not an idiot, Tom. Unless you've been teaching me wrong the past two months..." Of course he wouldn't admit it if he had. "By the way, there's still half a vial of the elixir left. How long do you think it'll keep?"

"What, your alchemy books didn't tell you?" He was probably annoyed he wasn't her sole source of information and new magic, or something. "Seven days, doll. It'll be useless the day after tomorrow."

"Just as I thought." She stared at the half-empty vial. "Well, nothing for it, I guess. Bottoms up!"

"Wait! You're drinking it?" His letters were smudged in his haste to respond. "What if it's started to go bad already? You can't take risks with Alchemy, especially not when you mix Spagyric with Life Alchemy!"

That was peculiar. Why the sudden change of opinion after being so certain of his facts a moment before? Why the worry about what was essentially a powerful invigoration and restoration draught of body and spirit? Maybe after today's run-in with Lockhart she was waxing paranoid... but she didn't think so. She took a small sip from the silvery liquid and suddenly felt warmth flowing through her exhausted body. It was like the soft warmth of butterbeer but with the power of Firewhiskey ten times over. The last couple hours of physical and magical effort were erased, just like that.

"You're right Tom. No experimenting." She frowned at the Diary and her treacherous correspondent's beguiling words. "Thank you for warning me against a potentially serious mistake."

"No problem, doll. I'm always here for you." Had he always been so... possessive? Presumptuous? She couldn't find the right word. "I think you're still tired. Maybe a full night's sleep would do you a world of good? We can still talk before sleep takes you - so to speak. You can tell me about your very long and exciting day and I can tell you more about magic." One more sip, more of her exhaustion and a bit of her headache gone, and a few more interesting details became apparent. Trying to win her trust, was he? Insinuate himself into her personal life with the promise of more magic taught? Was Tom Riddle some sort of wizarding stalker, younger girls his target of preference? Morgana's tits, how much had the Diary's compulsion affected her after her own too-tiring schedule and Lockhart's efforts had worn her down?

"Sure. I'd love that, Tom." Oh, they'd talk all right. After she finished her little energy drink, she'd go back to only feeding him lies for a few weeks, and learning his own secrets. Maybe she was too greedy in using such a dangerous contact but, as with Lockhart, Tom had just tried to control her mind. Nobody was allowed to do that and it was now her job to get revenge. To do that though, she had to find him first.

Body bursting with energy she made for the Slytherin common room, Diary in hand. What made up personal facts was she going to feed Tom? A boy she liked but didn't have the courage to talk to? Some insecurity about being a late bloomer compared to Daphne and Tracey? Maybe a zit that resisted the common Boil Cure potion? A Dark wizard like Tom reading through such things... oh the horror he'd face. Like they'd ever be problems for Slytherin girls - boys could be asked and then obliviated (or punished, if their answer required it), bodies could be changed, most ailments removed. Even her height, the one thing she sometimes felt was lacking, could be changed with a second-year charm.

Something flickered at the edges of her vision, an imperceptible blur in the darkness of the dungeons. A split second later, powerful magic crashed into her customary Shield Sharm. She scrambled for her wand - why did she not have it already drawn? Oh right, Diary in one hand, empty vial in the other. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Another flicker, the blur moving closer, more magic crashing into her. Overtaxed, the Shield Charm collapsed and she was thrown against the nearest wall. Her invisible assailant lost no time gloating. They stepped over her prone form, close enough to feel now, and touched her with something rigid against one raised forearm.

Whatever it had been, her defensive gesture had been futile; pure fire flowed prom the point of contact, through her veins, and all over her body. Agony shattered every thought but the feeling of her own body convulsing as it was ravaged from the inside. The residual soothing warmth from the elixir was burned away and she screamed, rolled, slammed one hand and both feet repeatedly on the stone floor; anything to get rid of the horrible, excruciating, searing pain. Her other hand, still half-inside her purse and clutching the Diary, was freezing. Fire and frost clashed, reflecting her own futile struggle, until the Diary was knocked off her hand by her own wild spasms and vanished into her purse. The fire seemed to double in intensity, more pain than she'd ever felt, than she'd ever imagined feeling.

And then she felt no more.


	32. Consequences

**ro781727: All things being equal, petrification is not that scary. You're just put in magical stasis for a time. You neither feel anything bad, nor are in danger as you will eventually be revived. You don't even lose, subjectively, any time; you could sleep for ages, not needing to eat, drink or breathe, and wake up to a new time. (good solution for reversing accidental time-travel into the past, BTW). For this story, I needed something uglier and more terrible than that. Luckily, the Harry Potter canon provided.**

 **askasknot: Valeria hasn't even started studying runes yet. Self-enchantment can also go disastrously wrong, even if it can potentially do very interesting things. I mean, old Voldie put a lot of powerful effects into such a small mark. We're definitely going to explore such magic later.**

 **Urazz: No, the Diary is in Valeria's undetectably extended purse. Do you think it feels lonely being left all alone without its new BFF?**

 **DaughterofTerpsichore: What, a chapter a day isn't fast enough? :)**

 **How910: Close, but not exactly. The Cruciatus Curse is fairly well known - its effects would have been recognized by most accomplished wizards. No, it's something a bit darker.**

 **Disclaimer: The sky is blue, the sun rises in the East, JK Rowling owns Harry Potter: they're facts of life. Unless you get ported to Venus, where you'll be too busy burning in 800+ degrees to notice the red sky and the reversed planetary spin.**

 **...**

"No need to fret, my dear." Albus Dumbledore said to the young witch before him kindly. "Take all the time you need to remember. An accurate but slow recall is better than a hasty but distorted one."

"I..." Hestia Jones paused to gather her thoughts then continued with more confidence. She'd wanted to be a hit-witch (and not hit-wizard, as the Ministry labelled her) since forever damnit! One small setback wouldn't send her crying like a little girl! "I was standing guard at the door as I was supposed to. The mediwitches had just finished their rounds, checking the two victims. There had been no change, just like every other day for the past week. A short time later - no more than a couple of minutes..." Hestia shuddered. The feeling of helplessness, of having her wand at hand and not being able to use it, of being awake and aware but unable to fight or call for help when an unknown, unseen assailant approached... "...someone hit me with the Full-Body Bind."

The two other people in the room exchanged glances at that. The Headmaster gave her an encouraging smile then stared off into space, deep in thought. The hospital Matron glared. More at the Headmaster than at her but still... she was intimidating. Especially given who she was. She decided to go on with her report, if only to escape the silent accusations.

"I neither saw nor heard the attacker approach. They must have been Disillusioned, or even invisible, and possibly magically silenced." She took a deep breath and went on to the more... interesting part. "While I was held there, I heard whispering. I could not tell what was said - did not even notice it until I tried to review the event later..."

"Understandable, my dear." Albus Dumbledore nodded at her. "This was your first time in the field, was it not?"

"It is most certainly not, Dumbledore!" The Matron immediately shouted. "Sending a girl barely out of Hogwarts in a situation you expected anyone dangerous to turn up..." She mumbled the rest through gritted teeth. The only words Hestia caught were "senility checks" and "mandatory".

"Whatever was said, the concealed attacker approached then." She said, drawing the attention of the two older people before things could deteriorate. "They placed their wand in the narrow gap between my back and the wall. Then they hit me with a low-power whispered stunner." She raised her hand then, showing the two of them the piece of parchment inside. "When I came to fifteen minutes later, this had been transfigured into the pair of muggle sunglasses the attacker must have put on me. It was then that I notified the supervisor for that hospital ward and sent a message to you." She stole a glance at said supervisor. Fortunately, her attention was still focused on the Headmaster.

"So to sum up, our unknown attackers entered the Hospital without tripping any of the hostile intent, warning, or defensive enchantments, scouted the place undetected until they located the room Mister Creevey and Miss Clearwater were being treated in, identified you as a guard, devised and executed a plan to neutralize you with only minor magic that would not trip any detectors or alert witnesses, and in a way you would not appear to have come to harm, then left unhindered before you recovered." Dumbledore frowned. "Those look like the actions of highly prepared professionals, and strong ones at that to have concealed themselves from detection. Wouldn't you agree, ladies?" Hestia readily nodded but the furious Matron didn't.

"Don't patronize me, Dumbledore. In my office - where you now stand, if you hadn't realised - you're neither Headmaster nor Chief Warlock." The Hospital Matron rose to match the Headmaster in height, her normally kind dark eyes smoldering with fury, her beautiful and long brown mane more resembling a thorny bush after so many hours of hard work without time to even use a brush, let alone rest. "If you'd shared pertinent information on what exactly happened to those children, I'd have personally erected better and stronger enchantments around them. If you'd shared your beliefs that they were in further danger, I could have had a pair of Aurors standing guard over them, not a witch with her training unfinished and without backup. But since you didn't, I don't quite feel like sharing what my latest examinations showed. Not to you in any case!"

"Healer Tonks!" Dumbledore started but the woman interrupted him again.

"Oh no, you don't. I'm neither a member of your Knitting Circle of the Flaming Turkey nor worship your infallibility. That's my daughter, fool that she is. Me, you'll find much harder to convince..."

"Please Madam!" Hestia pleaded. "We're just trying to help!" Her request drew the older woman's scrutiny like a hawk observes a rabbit before pouncing. Her previous estimation of the Matron's ability to intimidate had been way short. Andromeda Tonks née Black could be scarier than her sister, for being entirely sane.

"Recruit Jones, what are you holding?" She spat her hit-witch rank like an obsenity.

"A-a parchment, Ma'am." Not answering didn't seem wise. Imagine that...

"Read it."

 _'Following others blindly can get you killed.'_ She read and looked at the older witch.

"I don't see whoever wrote that as being evil. Do you?" Her eyes were kinder now, like a mother looking at her favorite, if disrespectful and contrary, daughter. "Like you, my daughter is a believer in causes. However much I fear for her life, however many times the two of us argued, I could never change those beliefs of hers. So I am not going to try it with you now. All I ask is that you think of yourself from time to time. Especially when meddling old men are making speeches about the Greater Good..."

"Andromeda, enough!" Dumbledore interrupted tiredly, with an air of breaking up an argument he'd faced countless times before. "Please tell us what you know. It is my students you have under your care."

"As you wish, Albus. In fact, I'm rather happy I can prove you wrong." She took a few pieces of parchment that had been lying on her simple white desk. They were obviously medical readouts, reports of the findings of herself and other mediwitches and mediwizards.

"These attackers of yours did not do any harm to our patients." She smiled for once. It made her look both regal and beautiful. "In fact, they fed them a powerful physical and spiritual restorative. Their skill in Healing left something to be desired - the dosage was off by a fair margin - but their choice in cures did not. Both Miss Clearwater and Mister Creevey should recover by the end of the school year."

"Indeed?" The Headmaster asked, surprised. "Do you know what this cure might be? Could we use it on Miss Campbell?"

"I'm chief mediwitch in the long-term care ward of Wizarding Britain's premier hospital, Albus. Of course I know of it." She spoke a few words in what sounded like Latin, whose meaning Hestia didn't recognize. Dumbledore, however, did.

"Curious. It is still a few days short of a month since the first attack." The Headmaster's expression only took a few moments to brighten with an idea. "They used Alchemy. It significantly speeds up the making of that elixir."

"Why isn't such a useful fact more well-known, Albus?" Andromeda Tonks asked. "It could have helped many of our patients over the years, your students included."

"Except for wizarding portraits, Life Alchemy has been classified as a Dark Art." The great wizard explained. "For every patient saved due to a fast-brewn elixir, there would be a Cockatrice or Basilisk on the loose, or a defeated Dark wizard regenerating to full health and power."

"Oh? Then you wouldn't be happy to learn the third victim of your school's latest problem has already been given the cure?" Healer Tonks challenged. "Somehow, Miss Campbell had already been given a full dose of the elixir by the time she arrived here. Administered so soon after the curse itself, it will enable her to recover within two weeks at the outside."

"That's good news!" Hestia exclaimed. She'd seen that little girl when she'd been brought in and all the blood and broken limbs had made her queasy. Apparently, she'd struggled against the curse longer than the others - so long and hard that in her struggles she'd hurt herself.

"I'm not so sure Headmaster Dumbledore would agree with you." Healer Tonks was almost laughing now. "After all, this mysterious third party has just been proven capable of acting within Hogwarts itself."

 **...**

"She'll be OK, Tracey." Harry said to the Slytherin girl.

"Do you Gryffindors ever believe your own morale-boosting drivel?" The snarky brunette spat back. "If so, my already abysmal opinion of your House has just reached a new low."

"She's been taken to St Mungo's. They'll patch her up." Ron said sagely.

"Weasley, if you make one more witless comment in your quest to cheer me up and only manage to prove your own idiocy, I'll hex your mouth off." Wisely, the redheaded boy retreated from the brunette girl's raised wand.

"You know what?" The Boy-Who-Lived said with renewed determination. "I'm not going to sit here moping. I'll go out there and solve this mystery."

"Good idea, Potter." Tracey snorted. "Except we have no leads."

"Don't we?" He produced two empty pieces of parchment and a pen. "Daphne left these to me, just in case I wanted to go after Dobby during Christmas. Still no idea what they do, but I gess you know? We also have the best Invisibility Cloak ever, access to a huge library full of magic books, three fairly good brains between us, and a tenday with no Professors over our heads or other students to bother us."

"It's Yule, not Christmas, and only two and a half brains." The brunette Slytherin witch smiled. "But otherwise not a bad plan, Potter. Let's go find what this Chamber of Secrets business is all about."

 **...**

Hagrid collapsed in his hut, exhaustion setting in despite his prodigious half-giant's stamina. Burn marks healed slowly on his uncovered hands and more than one rib in his right side had settled into a dull ache. Norberta had grown - a lot. He couldn't believe that only eight months ago, she'd been his little baby. He laughed with his previous ignorance - he'd initially thought she was male. And that raising her would be fairly easy - after all, had he not dealt with class-XXXXX for fifty years?

Unfortunately, Norberta was proving neither as intelligent nor as friendly as Acromantulas, Chimaeras, or even Cerberi. And at twenty feet long, she was proving a bit hard to manage. There must be something he could do to calm her down, maybe in the Hogwarts library? Unfortunately, academics had never been his strong point; to him, the lettering in most books was tiny and hard to read, and handling a pen was nigh-impossible.

What could he do now?

 **...**

Gilderoy Lockhart woke up Christmas morning to a huge pile of presents and letters from his many admirers. Most were from adoring fans expressing their well-wishes for the holidays, requests for appearrances in this or that social occasion, the occasional stalkerish poem or demand. The latter didn't worry him. Gilderoy Lockhart was too public a person to fear being openly attacked and a quick Obliviation could get him out of most situations.

Why, he did retain some few images of a pleasant evening with a great and loving friend of his. No details though; the young woman's name, how the evening was spent, or even where they met were missing. This didn't worry him either; he'd had a few such encounters in the past, after all. A bit of encouragement on his part had made the encounter all the more... pleasant for both parties, the incriminating details removed from his mind by his own hand so he could not betray himself, not even under magical questioning. That more details were missing this time... well... there must have been a bit more than the usual encouragement involved.

He shrugged and went back to answering letters from his fans. The envelope he'd just picked up was thicker than usual, and a bit rougher. It was very high quality goatskin though, which meant mildly expensive. A flick of his wand opened the folder without tearing it; no reason to destroy a perfectly reusable commodity. Out came a bundle of magical pictures, full color and animation.

All traces of amusement and satisfaction left Gilderoy Lockhart's face, to be replaced by the paleness of both fear and fury. The pictures were of him naked. And not in the arms of some lovely fangirl, no. He was in a dirty, muck-filled table. In the company of bloody goats! Except for the situation itself, there was nothing inappropriate going on - but that wouldn't be what most people would think. The public was always ready to believe the worst of anyone - but especially its heroes. They would ignore the slightly dazed look of his image-self, a rather obvious indication of compulsion, and latch like limpets on the fact that magical photos couldn't be faked; what you saw was what happened. Nevermind all the ways misdirection could be worked into a true picture, from plain disguises, to polyjuice, to mind-magic. Those images could ruin him, if publicly used.

But how could the images have been taken? Compulsion use was obvious but when... that evening with his friend! Could more of the evening be missing because someone set up such a despicable trap and blackmail just for him? What of the girl he faintly remembered? Was it more memory tampering, or true memories surfacing because his attacker was not an expert in mind-magic? He didn't know, but he planned to find out.

The first step was to locate the girl...

 **...**

Lucius Malfoy was feeling ambivalent. On one hand, the possibility of his Master's return terrified him. He, along with others, had done his best to deny his allegiance, conceal his past deeds and avoid any association with his Master in the public eye for over eleven years. Should his Master return now, he would be in for a very painful, potentially fatal reunion. Betrayal, however small, would never be tolerated by the Dark Lord.

On the other hand, he'd put into motion a plan that would discredit his Master's greatest enemy, shatter the morale of mudbloods and blood-traitors, and destroy potential future enemies of his Master's in one fell swoop. And the plan was succeeding; three mudbloods had already been attacked, including the insufferable little mudblood speck that had dared challenge his own son. Albus Dumbledore was nowhere close to resolving the situation and soon Lucius would be putting into motion procedures that would lead to his sacking as a Headmaster and irreparable damage to his credibility and powerbase. And he was doing it through one of the artifacts his Master had left to his keeping.

But the entire plan had been hasty. He'd been pushed to act ahead of time, hoping for an earlier beneficial outcome. If the most capable mudblood of her year had turned out to be attacking other mudbloods, nobody would ever trust a mudblood again. Especially if a twelve-year-old mudblood bitch had been pushed into doing multiple murders. However, something must have gone wrong; his original target lay now among the victims. Had his Master's diary been stolen? If yes, would he be able to recover it? He had no idea. And he could not well barge into Hogwarts searching for answers. But he knew someone who could.

"Dobby!" He shouted, calling his ugliest but most effective servant into his presence.

 **...**

Albus Dumbledore was worried. These recent attacks had frightened the entire school, of course. The actions of a mysterious third party occupied the minds of the few allies he'd quietly gathered - and those of annoying but useful acquaintances, too. But neither the attacks themselves nor outside interference had worried the great wizard. Rather, he was disturbed by the nature of the attacks themselves.

Of all those still living, he was possibly the only one to still have an objective recollection of the initial Chamber of Secrets incident. Many of the others that lived through those times convinced themselves the version of the story Tom Riddle spoonfed them was reality. The remaining few did not have access to tools of memory preservation and recall as elaborate as he did, and were all as old as he or older. Fifty years are a long time - long enough for things to be forgotten, or purposefully lost.

Thus he worried he was the only one to know with certainty that these newer incidents were subtly but definitely different than those in the past. An old, known enemy was one thing. He could be anticipated, directed, manipulated, until he landed into the traps set for him. A new enemy that disguised himself as the old... that was another beast entirely.

He still firmly believed that, as with Grindelwald before him, Tom's rise to power was mostly his fault. Not entirely - he was not arrogant enough to claim sole credit for any event involving such a large number of other wizards - but still his own mex to fix, however much he would have preferred to stay out of politics and the wielding of power. But responsibility for the student body's wellbeing was also his; this new enemy could not be allowed to harm them.

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore stopped pacing and thinking, and begun to plan.


	33. Zero Tolerances

**Serpentine13: No comment on what happened. The whole point of focusing on the changes in the original plot is that you guys and gals can read a story with suspense and cliffhangers. Gkad you like Valeria's personality though - she's supposed to embody both the qualities and flaws of Slytherin.**

 **DaughterofTerpsichore: Though I can't promise I can keep this up once Summer is over and work starts again, reader feedback is what motivates writers. *hint***

 **Urazz: It was not preemptive drinking. She was feeling exhausted and worked over and it would go to waste anyway. Plus, she noticed that Riddle was trying to prevent her from drinking it so she did it to be contrary.**

 **Disclaimer: Harry Potter doesn't belong to me. I'm too young and poor to be JK Rowling.**

 **...**

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Miss Campbell." The Headmaster greeted her as soon as her eyes opened. Her thoughts feeling less and less sluggish as she left sleep behind, the smell of potions and disinfectant and the whiteness of the walls registered. They were in the castle's infirmary and for the moment, the two of them seemed to be alone.

"How..." That one word came out as only a croak, her throat dry with disuse. She tried again. "How long... was I out?"

"Twelve days." Albus Dumbledore smiled. "It is Sunday morning, January the third, last day of vacations. You're very lucky to be among us, Miss Campbell. Thanks to an unexpected intervention by parties unknown, you have recovered months ahead of the other victims."

"Lucky?!" Valeria asked, dumbfounded. "Twelve entire free days lost? That's... that's... nearly fifty thousand spells cast in practice and revision, Headmaster!" She was horrified at the revelation. Casting a spell when given a hour-long lesson to do so was child's play. Doing it easily, with no more than two or three seconds of effort, required the kind of practice good students usually put in over the year. Whittling the mental effort and wand motion down to reflex so as to be quick in a duel and eventually truly master that bit of magic? There was a reason most witches and wizards favored only a couple of spells out of many hundreds they learned during their school years. The blonde Slytherin witch had vowed to be better than that. And now some unseen attacker had stolen so much free practice time from her...

"Indeed?" The Headmaster's lips quivered. "Your days must be quite busy for a lady your age." He had no idea. "You understand then, why these attacks must stop? Most wounds fade, but the time we've been given is precious beyond measure. It is my belief that whoever is attacking muggleborns wants to do more than frighten them. It would certainly be a coup, if they were all scared out of the castle." The ancient wizard scowled. "Yet even if that were to be avoided, the victims eventually healed, their long absence and the attacks' emotional impact would inhibit their learning. The survivors would be less than they could have been and with no obvious wounds for public opinion to see and remember, many would see their struggles in later years as proof of inborn deficiency."

For once, the Headmaster's words afforded him some grudging respect. Before being attacked, she'd have never considered such an ulterior motive behind what she saw as horrible but ill-thought nonlethal attacks. Why would he share his speculations with her, though?

"I ask forgiveness in advance for this my dear, but as the only witness available it is my duty to request you revisit the no doubt horrible incident of twelve days ago." He nodded at her seriously. "You can, of course, refuse. None would think ill of you for wishing to forget it ever happened."

"On the contrary, Headmaster." She said respectfully. She was uncertain how Albus Dumbledore usually treated Slytherins in such situations but to her he'd shown at least a modicum of understanding with not a hint of useless pity. It was only polite to answer in kind, despite his subtly influencing her into being more open. It was no less than she would have done, after all. "I have zero tolerance for bullies and racists and I would be happy to help you. Unfortunately, my attacker was nearly invisible during the whole incident, as well as entirely silent. They broke down my Shield Charm in their second try and as I'd foolishly neglected to have my wand within easy reach, cursing me posed no challenge to them." She thought about the event, thankful that without magical enhancement the actual pain could not be recalled. "The only other detail I can tell you is that the curse required contact with something rigid. Maybe it was their wand?"

"Thank you, Miss Campbell." He said solemnly. "You've been considerably more helpful than I expected."

"How so, Headmaster?" She asked, curiosity winning over poilteness. "Because one couldn't expect sincerity from a Slytherin?"

"Nothing of the sort, young lady." He frowned, but not at her disrespectful attitude. "It is just so very curious that the one to attack you used the exact same tactics as whoever slipped in a cure to both the other victims in St. Mungo's and yourself. In fact, it was the almost immediate reception of said cure that allowed you to recover so rapidly." He sighed and suddenly looked far older and frailer. For a century-old wizard, that was quite the feat. "I am beginning to wonder whether this unknown assailant is playing some sick game, cursing people with one hand, providing a cure with the other."

Wait, what? It took her a minute to process the Headmaster's words and when she did... Oh Merlin and Morgana, she and her friends had inadvertedly used the attacker's methods when sneaking into St. Mungo's. The simplest answer usually being the truth, Dumbledore was now considering whether the attacker and the third party providing some help were one and the same. Coincidence or no, this was shaping out to be a right fine mess.

 **...**

"Trace! Let go!" She managed to cough out as the brunette envelloped her in a painfully tight hug. "You're crushing my ribs and I kinda need them."

"Oh we were so worried, you were hurt like the others, we didn't know what to do, and I was crying so much, and Ron was being a prat, and Daphne wasn't here, but Harry had this idea, and we worked day and night on it, spent every hour reading up about it, and could only find a few hints, and then Hagrid came back, and he's in huge trouble, and Harry thought to ask him some questions, and he was being all evasive, totally hiding something, and then we heard you were OK, and..."

"Breathe, girl!" Valeria commanded, smiling from ear to ear. Harry was smiling too and Ron was actually laughing, the prat. As Tracey paused to take a breath and maybe rub off a tear or two, she looked at all three of them.

"So, you guys have been busy." They nodded. "Anything I should know?" They nodded again and she indicated that they should share.

"Dobby dropped in." Harry announced. "The little elf seemed really sorry that you had been attacked."

"Really? What did he have to be sorry for?"

"I am not sure." Harry looked left and right, checking to see if they were truly alone in the hospital wing. What a visual check would do given how many people ran around the castle invisible at times, she had no idea. "He obviously could not say much beyond how great I was to rid them of the Dark Lord," He winced - he'd always had trouble accepting his fame. "And how sorry he was a friend of the great Harry Potter was attacked. He tried to tell me something else, but couldn't. His hints all revolved around Voldemort; when I directly asked if Voldemort was responsible he said no, but with an air of trying to share something forbidden. We gave him the parchment and pen, of course. Dobby said he'd write as much as he could." He strared at her, then at Tracey. "I still don't know what that's about, by the way."

"Are you sure he said the 'Dark Lord', Harry?" She asked, exchanging glances with Tracey. The brunette's eyes going wide were proof enough that she understood.

"Yes. Why?" Harry said, bemused.

"Only Death Eaters and dark wizards and witches who respected Vodemort's power referred to him as such." She frowned. "That was another hint - Dobby's family must have been Death Eaters or sympathizers. He obviously knows what's going on or thinks he does, and he's sorry he has been ordered not to tell. Let's hope the parchment works - it's magically linked to another sheet that will copy what is written on it, just like that dictaquill will copy what Dobby says." Seeing Harry and Ron's confused expressions she rolled her eyes and explained further. "I hope that, not actually knowing the info will get to us, Dobby will be able to talk about it when he's all alone. He could simply mutter to himself, then destroy the pen and parchment when he sees they've recorded his words, and thus indirectly share it without disobeying orders."

"That's brilliant!" Ron said, excited.

"Gee, Weasley, didn't you expect Daphne to be cunning?" Tracey quipped. "There's a reason she was sorted into Slytherin, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, if all Slytherins are so smart, why did I discover more information and not you?" The redheaded boy said, heedless of the danger posed by any Slytherin girl's displeasure. Taking pity on him, Valeria interrupted their little clash.

"OK Weasley, I'll bite." She said mockingly. "What else did you discover?"

"Well, we asked Hagrid. He's been Gamekeeper since forever - since before my parents' time, even." Ron took a chocolate frog from the bag they'd been sharing earlier and bit its head off. "Only, he was being cagey, you know? Like the incident with the dragon last year. Wouldn't tell us anything, except for a few things he let slip."

"How is any of that something you discovered?" She needled him when he paused to bite into the frog again. She'd seen how that boy usually ate; if she let him start, they'd be here until midnight.

"I'm getting to that!" He glowered at her and defiantly chucked down the rest of the frog. "Only thing we learned from Hagrid was that the Chamber had been opened fifty years ago. He let slip he'd been a student here at the time but clammed up after that." The boy smiled at the rest of them with great satisfaction. "And that would be that if Snape hadn't given me that detention before Christmas." If he didn't get to the point, she was going to hex him. Especially since he'd just proclaimed his superb ignorance of wizarding tradition. "The git handed me over to Fitch, who had me scrub clean all the trophies, cups and dedications in the whole trophy room. And there I saw a dedication about special services to the school, with a date almost exactly fifty years before. Harry, Tracey and I looked it up and sure enough, that was when the Chamber had last been opened." He took out another frog but Valeria didn't say anything; the story was just getting interesting.

"See, the school governors and the old Headmaster must have tried to hush it up but they couldn't do anything about what the Daily Prophet had already printed." He smiled. "So we sent them a letter requesting older articles. Said we were doing a History of magic assignment - that was actually Tracey's idea." There he looked at the witch in question with some disbelief. Poor, poor Ron Weasley. His fate was now sealed.

"They named no names, those old articles, but they did say the culprit had been apprehended - by a student even." He went on in ignorance. His bliss would be brief, followed by lots and lots of hexing, if Tracey's steadily deepening scowl was any indication. "Hence that special services award. Wanna go see it?"

"I've been in the hospital for two weeks, Ron." She said. "I don't know how you Gryffindor boys operate - and no wish to, really - but for me that means a long, hot bath is in order. We can go later though. Unless you happen to remember the name on that dedication?"

"Sure." He said. "Filtch made me rub that old thing till it shone like a mirror." He bit into another chocolate frog and when Valeria's patience was about to run out, he continued.

"It was some guy named Tom Riddle."

 **...**

"Val! Wait up!" Tracey tried to keep pace with her but Valeria was propelled on by an ugly storm of emotions even she couldn't recognize. If she paused even for a moment, her control might slip and she didn't want Tracey to end up on the receiving end of a bout of not-so-accidental magic.

"Look, there's some things you must know before..." Tracey had caught up to her as they descended into the dungeons and she all but shouted the new password at the entrance to the Slytherin common room. How nice of the Headmaster to share it with her, as well as the location where her purse and trunk had been returned to.

 _"Pure Blood."_

The previously blank section of wall shifted aside to reveal the common room beyond... as well as the half a dozen or so other Slytherins that had stayed in the castle for the holidays. Draco Malfoy seemed to be in charce of them, standing front and center and staring at her expectantly. Their little welcoming comittee must have been set up just for her then. How... moving.

"You're not welcome here." Draco announced with more than a bit of his usual pomp.

"Excuse me?" She didn't have time for his usual idiocy.

"You heard me, mudblood!" He spat. "You were targeted by the Heir, you're obviously not worthy of being in the noble House of Salazar Slytherin." He crossed his arms and stared at her with satisfaction. "We put it to a vote, and it was unanimous. We don't want to share our House with your filth." Behind him, Crabbe, Goyle, Parkinson, Bulstrode and Nott all rose to stand with him and against her. They all had their wands at the ready, obviously prepared to back up their decision with more than words.

Her emotions boiled over. Her frustration at losing so much time, her disgust at the stupid, obvious, useless and ultimately futile racism practiced openly by so many in the House of the cunning, her anger at her unknown assailant for forcing her to deal with all that and ruining her plans, they all came out at once. She could have waited; the Headmaster and her Head of House would never allow the other Slytherins to cast her out like that. She could have dealt with them subtly, waited and struck them down one by one from the shadows. She could have brought in friends and allies to support her. But ultimately, the one trait more central to the House of Slytherin than any other was neither cunning, nor subtlety, nor resourcefulness. Thus, she chose another option.

"Depulso!"

The rich green and black carpet they were all standing on was banished by her spell to the other end of the common room, chairs, sofas and tables swept along its path. The abrupt and violent lost of their footing had the four boys and two girls falling forward and landing on their faces.

"Accio Wands!"

In the sudden attack and subsequent fall, half of them had lost hold of their wands. Even those that didn't failed to keep them in a tight enough grip, though; her summoning charm ripped them all off their hands and into her own.

"Oppugno! Epoximise!"

That same carpet rose up when hit by the Offensive Animation Jinx and wrapped itself around all six of the fallen Slytherins, then proceeded to beat itself and them against the floor. The Sticking Charm ensured that it could not be unwrapped through physical means. Cushioned by the carpet, she doubted any of the blows would be threatening, but they would be painful.

"I am keeping your wands." She announced loudly over their yells and curses. "You could complain to our Head of House or the Headmaster about this but then you'd have to explain how this mudblood took out all six of you, and why. I doubt they'd believe any of your usual lies, or be amused by the truth. Alternatively, any one of you who feels like challenging me in a formal duel within the bounds of the Dueling Club and before at least fifty witnesses will get their wand back. If they win in that duel against a mudblood their age and, according to their beliefs, rubbish at magic, they can get back the other five wands too."

Leaving them and an amazed Tracey behind, she made for the second-year girls' dormitory. She was going to have a few words with a certain Diary, while the six idiots in her year had it beat into their thick skulls that the most important trait in their House was none other than power.


	34. Loss

**ro781727: Ninety-nine percent of all participants in a fight hesitate, try to think things through first, avoid the fight entirely, posture and grandstand and so on and so forth. Very few people will simply strike first, doing nothing of the above. In the time it takes to shout "Your time has come, mudblood!", those people will have said "Reducto" four times, or drawn their gun and shot you in the face. Malfoy and his goons are not that kind of people.**

 **askasknot: True _Fiendfyre_ would need a great deal more power and dark emotions intentionally fed into it (like most high-end Dark magic). What Valeria does is to _Fiendfyre_ what an _Aguamenti_ spell would be to the Black Lake. It still is pretty dangerous and could pass off as its bigger brother at first glance. (see Borgin's reaction).**

 **Urazz: elaboration on that forthcoming in this chapter.**

 **lightning king: Pairings won't be fully decided until much later - the six of them are still twelve! As for the dreaded 3x3 match, there's only one pairing planned in their group and it isn't a certainty.**

 **How910: Yeah, this month is probably going to be the only one with this fast an update schedule. No way I can keep up like that come September.**

 **Disclaimer:** " **Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Harry Potter Rowling wgah'nagl fhtagn**."

 **...**

Draco Malfoy was writing a letter.

As with all other times, it was one to his Father. Unlike most other times, it was not about how well he'd done on their latest Potions or Charms assignment, or about how well he'd flown in a Quidditch match, or how the other Slytherins followed him and the Malfoy family name. It was a... request for help.

He didn't want to admit it, but the mudblood bitch scared him. Not because she was better than him but by how she acted. Everybody knew that to get ahead in life, one needed to play politics. Manipulate others to do your work for you, be good enough in making deals that every one of them was to your advantage, know enough secrets and inside information that you could get others to do what you wanted and improve your family fortune both. It was simple math, really: there were tens of thousands of wizards and witches in Britain. No matter how powerful, knowledgeable and skilled one was individually, if someone else could leverage the efforts of a couple dozen other wizards against him at once, they'd lose. If one could leverage thousands... that was true power. That was what his Father had taught him and that was how he worked, from the first moment he'd set foot in Platform Nine and Three Quarters. Out of all the lower year students, he was one of the most influential and powerful - and all that done with minimal personal effort.

But the bitch didn't think like that. Whereas he put most of his time in House politics and having fun ordering his minions to and fro, all she did was read, and practice, and work on magic. She didn't care about politics as she should, she didn't cave in to peer pressure, she practically ignored the social obstacles and traps he sent her way. Draco's problem was that most people saw things individually, not collectively. This made them easy to manipulate of course, but also made them hesitate when facing an individually stronger opponent. The herd of sheep could trample the wolf if only they'd try to. Twice he'd tried to direct them so, but they had failed him.

That was how he now found himself in the position of having to face the mudblood in a duel. He couldn't avoid it and retain his standing within the House. And unless he could prevent his quick defeat, loss of face would happen anyway. Draco Malfoy was no fool; he knew he was at least as good as she but the mudblood put in four times the practice. Hogwarts, where the children of all important and influential families in the country went together, was the best time to build alliances whereas becoming a better wizard could always happen after such alliances were secure. Most witches and wizards' magical ability peaked in their forties or fifties after all. While this meant mudbloods crippled their social development by treating Hogwarts as only a school - the bitch being no exception - she currently held a fleeting advantage.

Hence this letter to his Father. Lucius Malfoy was a good wizard, great politician, and unsurpassed in plots and shadow deals. He must know of a way the family wealth and influence could win, where Draco's as yet undeveloped skill could not. Besides, if the scion of a respected pureblood family soundly defeated the most abnormally capable mudblood to befoul Hogwarts in many years, nobody would believe again in mudblood equality.

And that was a goal the Malfoy family would do anything to achieve.

 **...**

"OW! That hurt!" Ron complained as the Banishing Charm was only partially spent breaking through his defenses and knocked him back twenty feet.

"Voldemort isn't going to stop because you cry uncle, Weasley!" Valeria retorted as she blocked Daphne's Stunner. Taking advantage of Neville's fumble at hearing that silly name, she sent a Tripping Jinx his way, sending the timid Lion tumbling into the floor.

"What has your knickers in a twist, Val?" Tracey colorfully asked as she barely dodged Harry's Disarming Charm and retaliated with a Tickling Jinx. The Boy-Who-Lived used his Quidditch-sharpened reflexes to dodge as well and the two of them settled into a fast-paced exchange of fire.

"You know, this is kind of fun!" Harry said and grinned widely, the Slytherin brunette returning the smile along with a Leg-Locker.

"Perhaps Valeria is worried about the duel." Daphne said as she coated the floor under Ron's position in a thin layer of ice, causing the boy to wobble as he tried to get to his feet.

"Don't be absurd, Greengrass!" Valeria's wide Banishing Charm pushed everyone else only a step back as she didn't bother to aim it, except for Ron who slipped on the ice and fell to the floor once more.

"Hey! No double-teaming!" The redhead shouted and sent two Stinging Hexes in quick succession from his prone position. One went wide but the other landed on Tracey's backside. That made the tallest Gryffindor the target of the Slytherin witch's reprisal and Harry had to intervene by casting a Shield Charm on his friend. Valeria raised an eyebrow at that - she hadn't read of the basic _Protego_ being used on others like that before.

"Well, Weasley if you think a fair fight is what the Death Eaters will give you..." Valeria had to pause and renew her own shield as Neville's Cutting Charm nearly broke it - being quite useful in Herbology, that spell was one of the Longbottom scion's best. "...you might as well give up now. If you're useless against multiple opponents, you'll be dead as soon as the war picks up ag-AAAAAHHH!"

The other five duelers in their free-for-all had cast against her all at once - twice. She'd managed to dodge two Stunners from the first barrage but the Disarmer, Leg-Locker and Banisher had broken her Shield Charm and then Weasley had toppled her by levitating her shoes, Harry had hit her with a Disarming Charm and sent her wand flying, and Daphne, Neville and Tracey had all landed a Tickling Hex each.

"What's gotten into you today?" Daphne demanded after they'd let her rolling on the floor in incessant laughter for a good five minutes. Their discussing whether they should leave her there until the curses' duration ran out had not been very friendly, especially when she couldn't get a single complaint out.

"Yeah, you've been insulting, irritable, demeaning and all-around foul." Harry said, arms crossed. "Almost like a pureblood idiot - no offense, Daphne."

"None taken. Many of us are idiots - just look at Weasley." The pureblood princess quipped and the five of them laughed.

Valeria didn't join them. The anger that had raged through her ever since she'd failed to locate the Diary among her things still had not subsided. Had the Headmaster himself confiscated it? She doubted it; if that had happened, she'd have heard about it when she got a suspension for using Dark artifacts: the Diary clearly was one. Not to mention the Aging Potion, empty vial with traces of _Primum Ens Melissae_ , and advanced Potions kit her purse had held that day... which she found intact during her search.

"Look everyone, this isn't a good time." Understatement. Funny how losing the Diary was affecting her more than being continually assaulted by its compulsion had. To her though, it hadn't been just a Dark artifact. Riddle had been a goldmine of magical knowledge as well as a sounding board for some of her more unusual ideas, a constant challenge of wit and wills that sharpened both, and a traitorous bastard that was unknowingly teaching her how to be more devious and subtle. She would also admit to a certain excitement at the knowledge that a lost clash with the malevolent Dark wizard might have meant her own end. "A few of the things that happened this year were... bad. I just need some time to work everything out, OK?" Everyone came in and hugged her at the same time, whispering assurances that they'd be there for her, that she could take all the time she needed. Did she have the best friends or what?

Now the only thing left to do was retrieve the Diary. It shouldn't be too hard. It had happened during the holidays when few people were around, the culprit must have known the password to the Slytherin common room, and they must have either been female or sufficiently powerful to overcome the defenses against boys in the Slytherin girl dormitories. How hard could it be?

 **...**

Eekins was uncertain how to proceed.

This was his NEWT year and final exams were no longer a distant and nebulous threat on the horizon. Success in Defense and Charms was in the bag, especially after Lockhart's unusual but informative instruction. Arithmancy and Ancient Runes were iffy but doable. It was his graduation project that worried him. He looked at the silvery gleam in his gloved left hand, a layer of dragonskin the only thing between him and something almost too terrible to imagine.

Ever since he'd had that strange dream when he'd fallen asleep during the ride on the Hogwarts express, things had changed radically. The voice in his mind had desired... demanded certain concessions, certain services. Even now he wasn't sure the voice had been talking to him at all, but the potential in those whispered ideas fit perfectly with some of his darker aspirations. His Quidditch carreer in school had been lackluster and his prospects for his dream job were less than exceptional. So... why not do it? Why not make a lasting impact in another way?

Thus he'd acted with renewed vigor and interest he had not had since his first year. He'd made plans; how to remain undetected, how to avoid triggering the warning enchantments he'd known were woven into the castle's defenses, how to allay suspicion and foster it to another at the same time, how to strike from the shadows with no chance of reprisal. He'd always had a meticulous, organized mind - one he'd inherited from his father. The voice too, had remained in the back of his mind, urging him ever forward. Or the memory of the voice - that was still unclear. And the plan? It had been a thing of beauty his own father would have been proud of.

But now, after a trio of successful tests and when he'd been ready to step up the frequency of his attacks, the voice had disappeared. Its subtle insistence, insidious yet unfocused and distant, had vanished without trace. He stared again at what he now held. Was he doing a good thing? What a question - of course he was. He was restoring the natural order of things. But was he going about it in the best way? The certainty even an echo of the voice had given him was no more.

Well... only one way to find out.

 **...**

"Five more minutes and Mister Malfoy will be disqualified for his absence!" Lockhart declared at the gathered members of the Dueling Club. Membership had swelled enormously over the past week, and probably temporarily. Almost the entirety of Slytherin was there to observe the match, as well as several dozen people from other Houses Malfoy had recently annoyed or insulted, in addition to the club's standard members. The faculty was represented in force by Professors Flitwick, Snape, and Lockhart, as well as Madams Hootch and Pomfrey. In short, what was only a duel between second-years had now become an affair involving a third of the school.

"Ten Galleons on Pansy bursting into tears when Draco doesn't show up." Tracey whispered to Ron as the five friends stood together, watching Valeria tap her foot on the dueling stage in annoyance. The blonde Slytherin witch wore lighter, more formal dress robes in green and silver both to show her House colors and to afford a greater range of motion just in case she had to dodge. If it came to that though, she'd probably lose; their friend was pants at dodging despite her otherwise impressive magical ability.

"No bet." Ron said and the brunette witch rolled her eyes. The day a Weasley had ten Galleons to spare on a bet would be the day pureblood society fully accepted muggleborns without reservations. She didn't say anything though; a bit of friendly ribbing and backstabbing was OK in old family circles. Airing another family's dirty laundry for all to hear though? Poor form, and probably grounds for declaring a blood feud.

"Will you two shut up? Things are getting interesting now." Daphne whispered as she and Harry were scanning the rest of Slytherin and noting who was rooting for Malfoy and who wasn't. Though it was possible Harry was only memorizing the range and variety of grimaces Malfoy's minions showed on their faces.

"If Malfoy is a no-show Val automatically wins, right?" Neville asked for confirmation. He knew the old forms as well as anyone, given the station of his House and family, but more things were going on here than a standard honor duel.

"Not exactly." Daphne frowned. "If Malfoy doesn't show, he loses face before the entire school but the matter is unresolved. Valeria stands to win a lot more if she can prove her point by crushing him."

"Too true." Tracey agreed.

"Politics are confusing." Ron said and Harry nodded his agreement.

"Boys!" The two girls huffed in exasperation, over Neville's protests.

"One more minute and victory goes to Miss Campbell by default!" Lockhart announced in his customary pompousness. The whispers multiplied and catcalls could be heard from several Gryffindors. When Lockhart's attempt at discipline failed, Professor Snape had to issue a few loud bangs from the tip of his wand.

Order was only restored when, with less than half a minute to spare, Draco Malfoy walked confidently into the Great Hall, dressed in a black dueler's uniform.


	35. Fighting Snakes

**Eliana34: My French is a bit rusty but I think I got what you're trying to say (If I misunderstood, please point it out). You have to remember though, that Hermione was never the best at everything - only the student with the best overall grades. Several people were better than her in Defense (Harry included), Neville was her equal in Herbology, she never did well in Flying Class and she dropped Divination entirely in third year. As for moving on to another school, Hermione didn't do it out of loyalty to her friends and Valeria isn't doing it out of personal pride and stubborness. That doesn't make either of them any less smart. For the second-year mystery, the issue is that readers already know some of the answers. Nothing to be done about it.**

 **DaughterofTerpsichore: Just read on and enjoy!**

 **StevenG: Questions answered below, mostly. As for the name Valeria and Valerie are often interchangeable. (or so the site I do my naming research in tells me). Valeria likes the former best, though.**

 **How910: More action follows. As for Accio and wands, it's doable. It's also easy to stop; Accio being omnidirectional, it has little penetrating power against shields as Harry could block such efforts from Death Eaters easily. There are enchantments to make something unsummonable but unless you're a Wandmaker or a Charms Master, adding permanent magic effects to your own wand isn't a good idea... and not many people would trust someone else to enchant their own wand - not to mention they'd have to give up their wand for as long as the work took to finish.**

 **Urazz: There are many ways to cheat in a duel. Given enough reason to, some people may attempt to prevent cheating though.**

 **...**

"Ladies and Gentlemen, the rules are simple." Lockhart was saying. "Our resident Dueling Master," he pointed with a flourish towards Professor Flitwick "has enchanted this stage so that no spell can get in or out, ensuring both the safety of all spectators and that no cheating will take place. The duelists' Head of House," he made a grand gesture towards Professor Snape "will confirm that the duelists' wands are their own and that they are matched, thus ensuring nobody else has taken their place through any sort of disguise. Not that such honorable people as the scion of a noble family or the brightest student in her year would consider cheating of course!" Lockhart laughed then. "Just making sure everything is by the rules, is all." There was loads of snickering and chuckles from the Lions and Badgers, though the Snakes were not amused at Lockhart's not so subtle barb.

"Now, the duelists will start at either end of the hundred-foot stage and at Professor Flitwick calling 'Ready', they will both draw wands. To ensure there will be no premature casting due to all the excitement or nerves, we won't be having the standard walk and count or anything. Both duelists will remain at their starting positions and will be free to start casting when Professor Flitwick says 'Now'." More whispers from the crowd, and a few angry mutters from Malfoy's entourage. Whoever had written the rules Lockhart was announcing seemed to have done their best to prevent... misunderstandings of any kind. Now, who could have possibly sent a draft of such rules to Lockhart via owl and convinced the fraud to ask other Professors to implement them? Valeria chuckled as Lockhart spoke on. "Intentional maiming or lethal force - that is, casting any spell whose lasting results cannot be reversed or fully treated - will be grounds for disqualification and possible expulsion. The duel ends when one combatant is unable to continue, has been forced off the stage, or forfeits the duel by jumping off the stage." Lockhart smiled at everyone and everything, like usual.

"And that is all, ladies and gentlemen. We wouldn't want to confuse our duelists with too many rules now, would we?" He laughed and bowed to his audience, then stepped back and let the diminutive Charms Master and former Dueling Champion take charge. Valeria's letter as Lockhart's 'best friend' had asked specifically for him on grounds of past experience, but the real reason was that the choice would annoy most purebloods immensely. Having someone with goblin blood preside over what they saw as a pureblood affair? Perfect.

Valeria wondered which of Malfoy's preparations she'd foiled. That dueller's uniform looked like it had a thin layer of dragonhide sewn into it and, like her, Malfoy was wearing the dragonhide gloves that were part of their potions kit, with matching boots. Idiot. It would afford him some protection, yes, but full-thickness dragonhide armor was illegal for anyone but law enforcement and the standard dueler's uniform could only stop low-power spells. At the same time dragonhide was stiff and would limit his mobility, one of the biggest advantages normal duelists had over her preferred style.

The two of them stepped onto the platform. She felt her standard shield fading as she crossed its enchanted borders but there was no interference with the Color-Change enchantment on her expensive dress; apparently, they were either allowed enchanted items or there was no way to exclude them as they did with active spells. Excellent. Flitwick stared pensively at both of them and then spoke a single word; the fight was on.

 _"Stupefy! Depulso!"_

 _"Serpentsortia!"_

She tried for the quick and easy victory, racing Malfoy's first incantation with her own Stunner and winning, only for him to dodge minutely without losing his own spell. Gracefully stepping aside from the Banishing Charm she threw next, he conjured a ten-foot constrictor. He must like snakes very much for that to be his go-to spell in every duel, even though casting a summoning spell must be taxing; they learned those in late fifth to sixth year, after all.

 _"Accio Wand! Protego!"_

 _"Protego! Accio Wand!"_

Her attempt at something he couldn't dodge fell flat when he defended successfully then mirrored her move, forcing her to cast a Shield Charm as well. He'd either learned some things since the last time they'd clashed a mere week ago, or being cornered like this had pushed him into greater effort; cornered animals were known to fight fiercely, after all.

 _"Glacis!"_

 _"Stupefy!"_

Coating part of his end of the platform with ice did not seem to adversely affect his balance at all. Could all pureblood children from ancient families move like that? The only other duelist she'd seen jump around a fight so well had been Daphne. With a dancer's grace, he set his feet carefully but surely and returned fire with a Stunner strong enough to rattle her shield. Despite his longer incantation, she could only take advantage by forgoing to stabilze her own defense and thus losing it. She chose not to risk it.

After that, the fight sped up as both combatants had stopped trying for a quick victory and opted to push their opponent to his or her limit in an attempt to force mistakes out of them. Given the duel's intensity, neither could afford to fall into such...

 **...**

Draco Malfoy had the perfect plan - and it was working!

Admittedly, his father's expensive help and detailed instructions into using it had been instrumental to pulling it off, but the rest was all him. He had paid attention in his lessons and learned the Stunning spell Lockhart taught them; it was the perfect spell to hit an enemy from behind with to then have them totally at your mercy. He had asked Professor Snape to teach him how to summon snakes over the Summer so he could terrify the silly Gryffindors - not that he'd shared his reasoning, of course. It may not have worked against bloody Potter and his unfair gift but it would work against the bitch. And it was he who'd noticed how the bitch was pants at weaving and dodging like a good duelist should. No matter how good she was in magic she had to do both offense and defense magically, whereas he could rely on all those hours of Quidditch practice dodging bludgers to do the same to her spells - all the while focusing on his perfect plan.

It was coming together nicely, now. Their rapid exchange of fire where his Seeker's hand-eye coordination versus her mudblood's abysmal athletic skill had sent each and every spell on target had left no time for complex spells or adapting strategies. Even if she saw what he was doing with his every sixth or seventh spell, the mudblood would be unable to stop it. And she wouldn't - he knew that now. Only her stupid arrogance and mindless determination had landed her in the noble House of Slytherin - and someone as determined and arrogant as she would not accept her imminent deteat until too late.

All he had to do was to keep up casting like this. It was more and faster than he'd ever had before but obviously within his ability, just like his Father had insisted. Backed with enough self-confidence and knowing perfectly what he had to do, he would pull off every casting correctly, he was certain. He just had to keep this up until the right time, both for the plan to work and for the evidence to fade beyond discovery. It shouldn't take long now - Father's measurements and instructions had been exact. It would have been even better had he arrived at the last second but the threat of disqualification had been real. Watches, mechanical or magical both, weren't always perfectly synchronized in as magically charged an environment as Hogwarts. But that wasn't a problem.

For the plan was perfect, and he was about to win.

 **...**

 _"Diffindo! Stupefy! Silencio! Incendio! Serpentsortia!"_

 _"Protego! Stupefy! Protego! Stupefy! Protego! Depulso! Protego!"_

Malfoy's unexpectedly rapid casting and surprisingly good reflexes were becoming annoying. Over the past couple of minutes they'd exchanged fire at a frenetic pace. Since Malfoy had managed to dodge every single one of her attacks so far she'd had to divide her efforts into offense and defense. Even with one of her Shield Charms almost always resisting a single strike, she couldn't be sure it would completely block a second so soon and had to recast; the spells Draco was using could potentially end the duel, just like hers would. Tiring her out was probably Malfoy's goal here; he was only casting about half the spells she was, except when he cast a Snake Summoning Spell every so often.

That part of his tactic was what troubled her. Why not more direct attacks that would press her further? He wouldn't manage to win ultimately, not with all the practice she'd put in with her friends having considerably improved her endurance, but the fight would be close. Closer than she'd been expecting, really; Draco was fighting like Daphne on her best day, maybe even a shade better. What the hell did he want with all the snakes, anyway? Everybody knew he was in Slytherin already and a bit of grandstanding would improve his image when he lost. Maybe he was aiming to trip or trap her? He'd conjured well over a dozen of the things already; had she been one of the duelers that moved around, she'd have accidentally rolled her shield over one of them already, unintentionally taking it inside with her and making it a serious problem. If that had been Malfoy's aim, the tactic had fallen flat; she was confident she could hold a shield up against him well enough to stop his spells so why move?

 _"Finite!"_

 _"Stupefy!"_

Malfoy ended her current Shield Charm with a nondamaging counter so she took the opportunity to strike back. She could easily race and beat his next casting with her next Shield Charm after all. What she had not accounted for, however, was for the mass of snakes to surge towards her.

 _"Protego! Protego! Protego! Protego! Protego! Protego! Protego!"_

 _"Finite! Finite! Finite! Finite! Finite! Finite! Finite!"_

Oh bloody hell! As she struggled to keep a Shield Charm up while Malfoy was doing his best to bring them down, she cursed herself for not seeing the trap for what it was earlier. She had really not expected the spoiled, pampered, pureblood dandy to come up with something like this, let alone manage to pull it off under the pressure of combat. He'd obviously learned the Snake Summoning Spell well enough to have some rudimentary control over the snakes he summoned. Something minimal, maybe only enough to tell them to attack, but it would do. Now all he had to do was force her to drop her defenses just long enough for a snake to pass through, or even simply strike...

 **...**

Ha! The bitch was cornered! The basic counterspell was the only magic he'd had to practice for this duel, the only part of his plan truly relying on a spell he didn't already know well. But with only one spell to master, a week had been enough. Especially after his Father has seen his plan, approved it, and had owled a couple of older students that were longtime allies of the family and instructed them to force him to practice it until he fell over from exhaustion. And then to force-feed him Pepper-up and Invigoration potions, get him up and have him practice again.

He didn't need to beat her defense long enough for him to send a spell through himself. Even with the help he'd been given, she was a freakishly strong witch for a mudblood. Father had strongly cautioned him not to try anything beyond his abilities and he wouldn't. But now all he needed was one slip. A tiny delay in her next shield for a snake to bite her. It would be an insignificant wound, easily healed. But the moment's distraction it would provide would either allow the remaining snakes to swarm her or give him an opening to blast her himself.

No, he'd let the snakes handle it. He wanted to see her squirming, trying to get rid of all of them in her stupid mudblood determination while they squeezed her in their coils and bit repeatedly. Maybe she'd even scream before the duel was declared over. And then she'd have to spend time in the infirmary, wallowing in her shame while he consolidated his position within the House and prepared a nice little welcome for the poor deluded bitch who'd thought she could make it in the House of Snakes.

Both he and she were sweaty now, his best efforts and his Father's help pushing his casting to its fastest crescendo. It would not be long now; his victory was at hand. And he would thoroughly enjoy it.

 **...**

This wasn't working. Malfoy had the shortest and easiest incantation, if only by a narrow margin, and could afford a split-second's mistake or delay. With the snakes practically pressing against her Shield Charm, she could not. Eventually she'd falter; Draco's strangely perfect duel so far aside, nobody their age was experienced enough to not make a single mistake under pressure. What could she do? How could she possibly get rid of nearly two dozen targets with a single spell with Malfoy ready to counter her attempts if he could? She didn't know any spells that...

Yes she did! The Banishing Charm could repulse many targets at once just as the Summoning Charm could bring many of them to the caster at the same time. All she needed to do was to time this well - perfectly even. And to put in a great deal more power than she usually did. Could she pull it off fast enough and strongly enough under less than optimal conditions? If she failed and the snakes were still close enough when her latest Shield Charm failed... She didn't know if she could manage it but had no other options.

DEPULSO!

A wave of force got out of her and left her panting as she fed her frustration at this duel, anger at Malfoy, and general stubborness into her magic. A loud booming sound like a thunderclap reverberated through the Great Hall, sending all students screaming and scrambling for cover. Not because of the powerful Banishing Charm, no. She could never have hoped to break Professor Flitwick's enchanted barriers around the dueling stage and her spell was confined within. Unfortunately the barrier let objects and living beings through just fine - it had to for the contestants to be able to enter, exit, or be hurled out. That was how all the snakes Malfoy had conjured were scattered all over the Great Hall, with their maker hurled off the stage as well. Valeria had just won the duel but not many people seemed to care as the crowd devolved into chaos. The Professors tried to restore order but a hundred and eighty teenagers and twenty snakes had other ideas.

Salvation was provided from a totally unexpected source; Harry Potter jumped onto the dueling platform and hissed loudly. The sound was eerily unnatural, alien and magical in the same time. It had to be; being a Parselmouth was an obviously supernatural skill, if only for the ability to converse with snakes that should have not been intelligent enough to articulate words and, from what she'd read on the subject, even command depictions of snakes without a brain at all - or ears to hear you.

All the snakes slithered back onto the platform and surrounded the Boy-Who-Lived, giving him their undivided attention. At his display, as it had happened once before, dead silence fell on the Great Hall.


	36. Hagrid Hour

**Urazz: Hard to answer, mostly because they aren't equally experienced and they don't have the same talents. With practice Harry could be the best in classic dueling, where agility and a rapid barrage of aimed attacks and quick deflections are key. Valeria would be the best when relying on magical and physical constructs and complex or unusual effects come into play. Strangely enough Voldemort who is dark fights like Harry, whereas Dumbledore who is not fights like Valeria. Daphne, Neville, Ron and Tracey will be at a close enough level once the boys get wands that match them and practice a bit but their skills lie in areas other than just combat.**

 **ro781727: Actually, it was Valeria's fault for the wide Banishing Charm and the professors' for not taking into account conjured animals. Malfoy just did what he was good at.**

 **How910: Not everyone has the same skills. Valeria is not athletic so dodging doesn't help her as much as it would, say, Harry. Now, learning to produce defenses other than just a Shield Charm? That's more her field. But yes, she has a lot of room for improvement. To get an idea of how much, consider that she can't conjure a single object yet whereas Dumbledore can conjure enough sleeping bags for six hundred students with one spell.**

 **Phillip: The current tensions are not a good environment for taking some of the steps she wants to. She needs an opportunity as well as a way to avoid suspicion.**

 **StevenG: Malfoy's own worst enemy is Malfoy. Beyond that, Valeria needs to be careful because Malfoy Senior doesn't need proof to go after her or her family and her muggle home has no magical protections.**

 **askasknot: Val was going to do that anyway. Except for the physical stuff - she's not one for exercise.**

 **Disclaimer: do many Fanfiction stories show Dumbledore's manipulations as evil without ever showing a plausible POV for Dumbledore himself? If yes, I don't own Harry Potter; JK Rowling does.**

 **...**

"...and that's why now everyone hates me." Harry finished sharing the events of the last few days with Hagrid. The six of them had retreated to the half-giant's hut after the whole dueling fiasco.

"I don't think anyone hates you, mate." Ron countered while trying to hide one of Hagrid's rock cakes in his pocket to avoid having to eat it. "It's more like... they're too scared to think straight, or something."

"Please, Weasley!" Daphne said with a derisive snort. "As if the current situation is new to the average witch or wizard. They're always scared of something, lack the confidence to act for themselves, are too lazy to be bothered, and too dumb to see it. All it takes is for someone to be a hero for them, tell them what to do, do all the hard work, or think for them and they'll follow blindly."

"Then how do you explain them fearing Harry?" Neville asked with a frown at the Slytherin girl's direction. "Isn't he supposed to be the hero?"

"Are you the scion of an Ancient House or not? You know how this works; if the public were capable of making correct decisions they wouldn't need exceptional individuals to rule them. So when you have someone starting the rumors about Harry being the Heir and Harry doesn't immediately refute them, this kind of idiocy grows and multiplies - like a fungus." She turned to the brunette by her side who was busy staring in disbelief at the bundle of unicorn hair Hagrid had hanging over a cupboard and then the rest of his entirely hand-crafted and rather dismal cottage. "Tracey, back me up on this. As usual, educating the dumber sex falls to us."

Valeria didn't join the brewing argument, not even when Daphne mentioned Harry should make a magical Vow on him not being the Heir. She was too busy with her own issues. How had Malfoy of all people managed to fight her on even terms and nearly win? She might be pants in the physical component of Dueling, as Daphne and Tracey were fond of reminding her, but when it came to spellcasting she was by far the best in their year. After Riddle's tutoring and convincing Lockhart to teach them his favorite spells in Defense, she even knew some fourth-year magic. So how did that pureblood dandy manage to cast nearly as well? She cast a softening charm on her own rock cake and pondered the problem while munching on delicious homemade goodness. She was a witch - why should a minor flaw in Hagrid's cooking prevent her from enjoying it? Besides, it probably wasn't a flaw at all; being a half-giant almost certainly meant normal foodstuffs would seem too soft and gooey to her large friend so he compensated accordingly. His full-blooded relatives had been known to munch on muggle knights in full plate armor back in the day, after all.

Speaking of Hagrid, he was being uncharacteristically silent. The Gamekeeper wasn't a man of many or big words, but he usually greeted them warmly and involved himself in any discussion at hand in his usual too-loud manner, often offering surprising nuggets of earthly wisdom in the process. But now... every time one of the others brought up the Heir or the Chamber of Secrets he flinched and wouldn't look any of them in the eye. He was being even more cagey and evasive than back in Yule, when Tracey, Harry, and Ron had asked him some questions. He was making tea just then, his hands shaking so much that one of the cups fell on the floor and shattered.

"Hagrid, what...?"

"Ne'ermind tha. I be bringin' 'nother one. Ye just wait..."

That certainly wasn't normal behavior. Despite his size, Hagrid was agile enough to move through the woods with surprising stealth and be deadly accurate with that giant-sized crossbow of his. Dropping that cup meant he was far too distracted or upset by something serious. Not even his excitement and worry about Norbert last year had made him such a wreck. She was about to bring up the issue to everyone's attention - except for Tracey, who'd probably noticed before she did - when there was a loud and insistent knock on the hut's door.

And Hagrid dropped the whole disc full of teacups he'd been carrying.

 **...**

"Inside! Now!"

Severus Snape was not amused. This wasn't a rare circumstance given his personality, but this time his displeasure had grown to such proportions that not even political expediency would save the target of his ire from his just and deserving punishment, let alone what his Head of House was about to do to him. Draco Malfoy seemed to understand that fact, if his defeated demeanor and fearful expression was any indication. Or maybe those were due to the expected reaction of his father to the recent debacle.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" Snape asked his once-favorite pupil. He doubted his pampered godson truly understood the consequences of his actions. Growing up in a family who had everything, with a father that treated him more as a political and social tool at times rather than the leader of the next generation of purebloods he had to train and raise, the boy had become convinced of his own superiority and his untrained, undisciplined mind could neither comprehend nor accept his own faults.

"Sir, I..."

"Do not speak, unless you have something to say. That is the way of the wise, and 'wise man' is exactly what the word wizard means. Obviously, that is one lesson you've forgotten." He glared down at the boy until his foolish godson deflated and sat down gingerly in the simple chair he'd conjured. "Not only your challenge has broken one of the most important rules of this House, making a spectacle of yourself and your argument with Miss Campbell, but you've also failed dismally in all you set out to accomplish."

"It's not my fault. The mudblood..."

"Use that word on your betters again, and what will follow will have you begging for expulsion." The idiot boy gulped in fear - good. "Make no mistake; Miss Campbell is your better. Forcing you to challenge her in a duel alone proved she had outmaneuvered you; most students will not think about that but if you believe your father and his friends will not, you're sorely deluded. Even members of your own House will see it. To that fact add her better scores in all subjects and her victory over you and she's just proven herself superior socially, academically and magically - mainly due to your own enormous blunder!"

"But sir!" His godson whined. Snape hated whining - he got far too much of it from the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs already. "What was I supposed to do? She..." He didn't finish his sentence, suddenly remembering why he'd contacted his father instead of more immediate authorities closer at hand.

"You were supposed to come to me. I would have brought evidence of her misconduct in the Common Room to the Headmaster, and he'd have no choice but to punish her when she failed to refute her actions. Something she could not have done since, fabricated evidence or not, she would have been guilty of the crimes we accused her of." Severus Snape raised one eyebrow in amused challenge at the boy's gobsmacked expression. "Did you really believe students could hide from me their blundering misdeeds in the heart of the very House whose Head I am?" His words made Draco Malfoy, scion of the currently wealthiest Dark pureblood family, to tremble just a bit.

He'd long ago taken precautions against the worst behaviour Slytherin House was capable of in the shadows of their own domain. Making sure history could not repeat itself - not without him unaware in any case - had been his number one priority once he'd been chosen as Head of Slytherin; even partial knowledge of the Dark Lord's past had demanded it. So he'd appropriated the magical portraits of some of his House's fairer members from times past and hung them in the dormitories and common room, hidden behind multiple secrecy and concealment spells each. There former witches could keep an eye on the girls, wizards did the same on the boys, and a pair of both did so on the common room. With copies of the portraits kept unseen to all but him in his study, he could be aware of all that happened within Slytherin with no-one the wiser. It had been these very precautions that had prevented no less than fourteen major incidents over the past decade, including a convoluted plot to take vengeance on some Gryffindors a few years ago that could have resulted in student deaths.

It had not been his idea originally, of course. Headmasters held the loyalty (and services) of far greater number of portraits after all, copies of which existed in many major magical institutions, from St. Mungo's to the offices of almost all important Ministry officials. And with so very few aware of that fact - he'd only learned it because he had Dumbledore's absolute trust - the intelligence that gave them was phenomenal. But that was neither here nor there - his current task was dealing with Draco. He had to find a way to help the boy grow up while still punishing him for his blatant idiocy, without gaining the enmity of the boy's father. Too many lives depended on his Death Eater contacts for him to do anything else.

"That is not the worst, though." Snape finally broke the brief silence, making the boy jump in his seat. "No, the worst is that despite your father's help and cheating ways, you still managed to lose. Allowing the girl to show off just how advanced she really is in the process did not do you or your father any favors in some circles, I assure you. Those who saw through your little trick are now asking themselves two things. Just how diminished the Malfoy line might be is the first. Whether they can take your place in the hierarchy is the second."

"Ch-cheating! I... I d-did n-not..."

"Save your stammering excuses for the gullible masses, boy." That idiotic ponce Lockhart had done an admiral attempt at setting up a fair duel, much to everyone's surprise. Lucius Malfoy however had access to resources and contacts most people could not even dream of, and had used them to buy his son a guaranteed victory had such been a possibility, however remote. "Every single spell cast perfectly under pressure? Every attack that could be dodged easily avoided and every curse of yours landing on target? You might have convinced your fellow students you're some Dueling prodigy, but you're not nearly a good actor enough to do the same with experienced wizards. Besides, you forget who I am."

He let him stew on that for a good five minutes, before going in for the jugular.

"At ten galleons a day, a ridiculously low estimate for the services of a highly skilled Potions Master, brewing that potion would have cost two thousand galleons for the work alone. Even the minimum dose that would trigger its effects briefly and leave no detectable residue or symptoms afterwards would have cost your father two hundred... assuming it was bought legally. At nearly triple the price for an untraceable purchase, your little stunt cost you nearly a year's allowance."

"W-what?"

"Politics aside, that was an extremely costly failure, and one certain individuals in this castle could not fail to notice." He gave the boy an absolutely pitiless sneer. "With your father already in the castle for other business, we have an hour at best to find some way to save you from something far worse than expulsion. And Draco? It will be neither painless nor dignified."

He snorted at the now ghostly pale boy and his feeble attempts to preserve his dignity. He would protect him from Lucious Malfoy's rage though. Not only because Draco was his godson. Not only because Narcissa had always been a friend despite his blood status. Certainly not because of the duty of House Head Dumbledore had forced upon him years ago. But because he had things to atone for, mistakes to fix, including once calling a certain very bright witch 'mudblood' himself. And because giving his efforts or even his life for what was right with nobody but Dumbledore the wiser was the only thing he had left.

 **...**

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore was weary of politics.

It had been the politics of all those families unwilling or unable to change with the times that had allowed Voldemort to start his campaign of terror half a century ago. The disturbingly independent and persuasive child Tom Riddle had been a lifetime ago, damaged by his past, had changed for the worst when immersed in the ideas of family and legacy as presented by fanatics and bigots.

It had been politics that had prevented Dumbledore and others from mounting an effective resistance during the First War. Despite the Order being outnumbered twenty to one in Death Eaters alone, it had been the large number of old families that indirectly supported Voldemort's movement that had bogged down organized opposition for a decade and had made the war drag on and on, with victims mounting on both sides. Case in point, it being declared a war only after the fact; no such declaration and its accompanying measures had ever happened while the war lasted.

It was now politics that were preventing him from fixing Wizarding Britain. Two thirds of the Wizarding World's wealth was in the hand of old Pureblood Houses, and over half of said wealth, and the political power that went with it, slowly pursued with nonviolent means what had once been Voldemort's agenda. The corruption in the ministry was worse now than it had been in the height of the war itself. Even right after Voldemort's fall pressing for convictions of the wealthier Death Eaters had proven impossible with seven tenths of the Wizengamot being purebloods, many of them more worried about setting precedents that would erode their power than serving justice to the followers of a Dark wizard that was apparently gone. It became painfully obvious if one looked into Voldemort's inner circle; only a third removed from the game, with five in Azkaban, three dead, and one bound to his service as a double-agent.

It was politics that had him escorting Lucius Malfoy and the weak, ineffective Minister for Magic the so-called reformed Death Eater had arranged to be elected to further his own goals, through Hogwarts and to the apprehension of an old student and dear friend he could no longer protect. Hagrid would suffer because he lacked the influence to declare him innocent, as he had once before. If he pushed it he would lose what little influence he had on Cornelius Fudge as the man, fearful of his own position and with a conditioned need to be told what to do when a situation grew beyond his control, would fully turn to Malfoy and his people for guidance. It would not be long the few small victories people like Arthur Weasley had managed against pureblood bigotry and the Dark Arts to be reversed and slowly, legally and inevitably for the entirety of Wizarding Britain to reflect Voldemort's vision of the world without him even having to return from his exile. It was because Dumbledore had lived through the rise of his old friend Grindelwald and his muggle counterpart Hitler that he knew how ugly politics could become. Some of the worst dictators in History had initially risen democratically, through legal means and the support of important parts of the population, rather than through force of arms. Luckily for Wizarding Britain, Voldemort was too enamored of violence to ever do the same. Had he tried, he'd have won political leadership as easily as he'd ensnared the entire student body and faculty in his years as a student.

Lucius Malfoy knocked on Hagrid's huge door, not so much to be polite but to appear so.

For a split-second, Dumbledore entertained the idea of acting instead of guiding, a thought that often came to him when he was forced to choose the lesser of two evils. The Ministry was corrupt, the entire wizarding world was corrupt; Hagrid and all hagrids would never get justice in such a system. He was the Grand Sorcerer and he had the power to change all that, did he not? Had he not waded through Grindelwald's army alone back in '45, finally meeting and beating his old friend in combat? Had he not been only one out of two in all of History to beat a worthy wielder of the Elder Wand in a fair duel, and win true allegiance of that mighty focus?

As no reply came from within Hagrid's cabin and Lucius angrily knocked again, the moment passed and Dumbledore conquered once again his greatest folly and greatest fear. Nearly a century ago he'd truly entertained such ideas long before he'd wielded the Elder Wand or become Grand Sorcerer. But he'd started them by abandoning his own family and ultimately bringing about his own sister's death in a duel with his best friend and his younger brother. Killing is an ugly thing to begin with, emotionally and spiritually. Murder is a lot worse, directly impacting one's own soul and distorting it towards darkness. The more foul acts one committed, the more he became a twisted abomination whose only desire was to wallow in his own depravity. He had seen the evidence for himself, both in his old friend and in Tom even more. With the first step down that dark path already taken, were Dumbledore to raise the Elder Wand and force his will upon the Wizarding World in a desire to do good he would soon become as terrible and twisted as those he opposed.

Hagrid opened the door timidly, then retreated further in without word. Ever since this new Chamber of Secrets debacle had started, Hagrid had feared this moment and now it had come. But Hagrid was not alone.

"Minister Fudge, Headmaster Dumbledore, Lord Malfoy. What a... pleasant surprise." The tall, silver-haired, second-year Slytherin girl greeted them with both pale eyebrows raised.

"Likewise my dear." Cornelius said warmly to the Greengrass heiress while Lucius scanned the room with distate. "And... oh goodness! Is that Harry Potter?"

From behind Hagrid's massive form, more children made an appearance. Harry was, of course, one of them. He was joined by Neville Longbottom, Tracey Davis, Ron Weasley, and Valeria Campbell. Dumbledore smiled at the group of six, while the Minister nodded politely to the boy whose formiddable grandmother was in the Hogwarts the Wizengamot, the girl whose aging grandfather was in the Hogwarts Board of Governors along with Daphne's, and shook Harry's hand enthusiastically. Lucius though... the man had already gone red with anger and was getting redder by the second, his gaze fixed on Miss Campbell and Mister Weasley. Ronald was scowling back, if a bit timidly, but Valeria smiled knowingly at the reformed Death Eater. She even gave him a little wave and a wink, mouthing something Dumbledore didn't quite catch. Lucius must have though, because he almost went for his wand then and there. It took visible effort for him to relax and avoid a monumentally bad decision that might get him hexed by the children, disabled and sent to the DLME by Dumbledore, or flattened against a wall by Hagrid.

So. The girl and Malfoy the Elder had interacted before and somehow - he couldn't begin to make a guess - Lucius had gotten the worst of it. This bore a closer look at the earliest opportunity.

"Minister, w-why are you here?" Harry asked with a bit of an embarassed stutted and then went beet red. "I mean..."

"Sad business, Harry my boy." Cornelius said solemnly. "Several attacks on muggleborn students - I had to intervene. I'm here to apprehend those responsible."

"You are?" Harry frowned in thought, looked around and put two and two together. Several people beat him to it though.

"Hagrid?!" Asked Neville, Tracey, Daphne, and Valeria incredulously.

"Indeed." Lucious finally had himself under control and his interjection came with a cruel sneer. "The oa... your large friend there was responsible for the Chamber opening fifty years ago, even for the death of a student." He said so cruelly, aiming to crush their obvious ties to the Gamekeeper for no other reason than to see their dismay. Dumbledore didn't try to interrupt, however much he disliked such ugly - and untrue - accusations being thrown around before his students. With the tiniest, briefest touch of Legilimency he caught Harry's attention and infinitesimally shook his head. They boy was smart enough to understand - and so were his friends. Miss Greengrass and Miss Campbell stared back briefly themselves and then the silver-haired Slytherin girl smiled.

"Lord Malfoy, that's a serious accusation." She said, turning her head left and right as if looking for something. "If true, where are the Aurors? They should be arresting the Gamekeeper now!"

"WHA?" Hagrid's bellow was confused, fearful, angry, and a bit hurt. Dumbledore on the other hand could not be more pleased. Whereas he could not act because all his efforts were into stonewalling the Dark bloc's politics, a Dark family, one of their own number, certainly could. And it would seem Miss Greengrass was a decent enough person to do it when one of her friends was so threatened.

"Don't worry, my dear." Cornelius interjected. "That's why we're here; to arrest the perpetrators and resolve the situation."

"But sir," the cunning girl pressed "You can't arrest him without DMLE representation! What if he complains about an illegal arrest? I don't want him going free on a technicality."

"My girl, I assure you..."

"He's put Harry in the line of fire, sir!" The girl almost cried when she saw Lucius Malfoy about to intervene. "The school falsely believes Harry is the Heir of Slytherin, sir! If the culprit is not found or we don't find another way to clear his name... There will be riots if such rumors spread beyond the school!"

"Merlin!" The Minister exclaimed in both surprise and worry. "Harry Potter, the Heir of Slytherin?"

"It's true, sir." Harry spoke up, catching on. "The other students practically exiled me and my friends from the Great Hall. We came here because... because we thought a friend could help us work the problem through. Help from someone older, who saw more than we did..." He stared back at Hagrid with an unreadable expression. Dumbledore had no doubt that everything Harry said was the truth - making it seem like he was accusing Hagrid with it though? The Slytherin girls must be training him. Ronald Weasley too, since the redheaded boy had neither interrupted not betrayed their plan. Amusing - beneficial too, if they could get Harry deeper into the Wizarding World.

"Sir, I demand punishment!" Daphne said, her anger very convincing. "The culprit... he had us losing our minds, frantically searching for a solution. The only thing we could think of was for Harry to make a magical vow." She stared at both a serious Harry and a very distraught Hagrid about to burst into tears. "I demand you put this _half-giant_ under an Unbreakable Vow to you." She mentioned Hagrid's ancestry with such scorn that even Dumbledore would have believed her if not for his Legilimency. "We have Professor Dumbledore here, you can do it immediately. No arrests, no trials; since he's guilty, he falls over dead and it will be legal. You'll even take the credit for personally apprehending and taking out the culprit, sir! Then we can do a lesser vow for Harry before the whole school. It'll clear his name and you will be the one to save the Boy-Who-Lived from such unfair treatment!"

"Now wait just a minute!" Lucius was livid. His little plan was about to collapse, if not in the way Dumbledore would have wanted. Magical vows were dangerous - especially the Unbreakable one. Were Hagrid responsible indirectly or even in part due to negligence or a mistake, like it has been the case with him unwittingly revealing information about the Stone last year, there was always a chance the vow could hurt him. The children might see it as a perfect solution, but magic wasn't always foolproof. Seeing a friend of fifty years fall over dead due to poor wording...

"That... is... an excellent idea!" Cornelius slowly agreed, though his words picked up speed as he talked. The ancient wizard focused for a moment, casting wandlessly and silently one of many spells he'd mastered to that extent and it confirmed his suspicions. He might have needed a gesture or proximity had the spell been of great complexity, but the compulsion he detected was weak and simple, if subtle. A nudge to turn Cornelius towards a decision he already had reasons to make before Lucius could change back his mind, rather than to bend the Minister's mind outright. Not too shabby - and amazing for a second year, even if said second year was Miss Campbell. He'd definitely need to have words with the girl soon.

"Minister, you can't be serious!" In his anger, Malfoy the Elder had forgotten how mulish Cornelius could be if he perceived someone going against him.

"I am!" Fudge said, coming to his full and rather dismal height. "I don't understand Lucius. Catching the culprit... acting now before it got worse... that's what you suggested! Only, this way it'll be legal and better for the Ministry too! And think about Harry Potter!"

 **...**

Despite Lucius' protests and Dumbledore's own unvoiced apprehension, Cornelius Fudge went on with the Unbreakable Vow and Hagrid was only too happy to cooperate. The result wasn't quite what the Minister had expected as Hagrid swore he'd never opened, helped open, or had someone else open for him the Chamber of Secrets and the Vow failed to take his life. Still, it was not a bad day for the Minister. He'd acted decisively, cleared an innocent man of the burden of a crime he had not commited fifty years ago, and then helped Harry Potter clear his name - all in half an hour's work. Cornelius' star could only rise from such an outcome and Dumbledore himself had been happy to use the Elder Wand to fix Hagrid's snapped wand, the pieces of which his Gamekeeper had kept those fifty years.

All was not good though. Lucius Malfoy had retreated from Hogwarts with an angry scowl and already preparing for round two, Slytherin House was not at all happy with a few of its younger members, and they were no closer to apprehending the true culprit.

Four hours after the Minister left Hogwarts and Harry's reputation was somewhat improved thanks to a more common magical vow, Argus Filch was found petrified in the second floor near the girl's bathroom that always broke down.


	37. Devious Devices

**ro781727: Not Polyjuice. Look at the brewing time Snape mentions.**

 **Urazz: Daphne and Tracey know a lot about politics in the magical world - the minor Vow for Harry had been their plan, but Fudge's presence gave them an opportunity for more. Neville knows too, but isn't as good at said politics. Valeria is still learning, but isn't above using her budding skill with compulsions to push people she doesn't care about into doing what she wants. Hagrid was cleared in Canon too, but after fifty years of being limited to only the spells he does for his job, he never tried to start learning again. Of course, he already knew enough to control his physically much superior younger brother Grawp. (With Grawp being 20 feet tall to Hagrid's 12 or so, he had five or six times his mass. No way Hagrid could handle him nonmagically.)**

 **Meneldur: Val didn't need to actually keep the wands, only withold them long enough for Malfoy to challenge her. After a public challenge, Malfoy couldn't go back on it. And she was smart enough not to keep them on her person or trunk but hide them somewhere else. There was no evidence something bad had happened, except for portrait testimony (which is unreliable). Many suspected Draco cheated but again, nobody could prove it. Most people didn't even have the knowledge to guess at how he did it and with the duel's rules being so good at preventing the standard methods of cheating, people didn't know what to think. I.e. anyone who guessed at Polyjuice would realize Flitwick testing the wands would have caught it. And yes, Daphne's cool. Every one of the six brings something different to their group and I'll be trying to show it throughout the story.**

 **DaughterofTerpsichore: Yeah, Filtch is a pitiable character. A squib with at least as many reasons to dislike wizards and witches as anyone that also has to work in a great school of magic where everybody else is learning how to do what he never will.**

 **Guest: Realistic characters and situations is what I'm trying for. The heroes working for their goals makes it so much more worth it IMHO. For Dumbledore, in canon we mostly see him from the point of view of his supporters and longtime allies. Here, we see the opinion of those who have reasons to dislike or oppose him. I am trying to show him as being the same individual as per canon, with the narrator having an impact. For Harry trying to improve, this is Slytherin ambition at work. Not only do the girls want to do great things, but they see lack of achievement as stupid and lazy at best, and abhorrent at most other times. Not trying to do your best is not an option when they are around.**

 **askasknot: The Killing Curse can be cast by as mediocre a wizard as Pettigrew and cannot be magically blocked under normal circumstances. This makes the differences in power between people like Pettigrew and those like Alastor Moody less relevant in a fight and agility and skill more important. However, wizards like Dumbledore and Voldemort have no trouble defending themselves against it - Dumbledore stopped it cold with a construct no less than three times in the duel in the book, and a fourth was swallowed by Fawkes. So wizards of their caliber resort to other sorts of attacks that are harder to block for that reason, and also because they can. If anything, the two of them dueling in the ministry were limited by the available space in their fight. If Flitwick can throw shields that can stop dozens of wizards over an entire castle and McGonagal can animate hundreds of statues at once, someone like Dumbledore or Voldemort fighting in the open would be downright scary. And yes, I do plan for some really big uses of canon magic later in the story. It is not a real magical war if someone doesn't knock down a few large bridges or castles, fields some dark creature armies, levels a city with all within it. You know, the usual. Except maybe for that last one.**

 **Disclaimer: Were two students that never graduated from Hogwarts capable of filling orders for hundreds of defensive enchanted items at a time and yet not a single such item was seen used by either side in any battle except the one Malfoy started? If yes, I don't own Harry Potter - JK Rowling does.**

 **...**

The sole muggleborn or muggle-raised witch in Slytherin in the last fifty-plus years growled in annoyance as she added three drops of Sphinx blood to the tiny amount of pale green-blue liquid simmering inside the last cauldron. As her knowledge of Potions grew, she'd come to realize that the complex discipline was effectively a collection of rituals that, due to similarities in method, a common liquid medium, and widespread knowledge of their existence, had been collected together under a single and deceptively simple name. One would gather and render ingredients from creatures and plants with magical properties in semantically, arithmantically, or astronomically significant ways, add them to a mixture at similarly significant order and ratios so they undergo simple alchemical interactions, symbolically 'sacrifice' them by boiling them over a fire, so that the final product contained a unique magical effect the potion's designer had intended. As the complexity of a potion increased, understanding the various processes involved became more and more important to producing the final result. However standardised, Potions were not cooking and treating them as such deprived them of the meaning behind each action... and thus the potion's potency. This was why her initial attempt at Polyjuice had only produced a dismal result with only a fortieth of the potion's full duration.

It was also the cause of her annoyance. In cooking and chemistry one could multiply the quantity of ingredients and still expect the same result. In Potions, not so much. The current mixture was a good example; doubling the ingredients would have meant six drops of Sphinx Blood instead of three, which did not have the same Arithmantic significance at all. So in order to produce a dozen samples of a given potion one would be forced to brew it twelve times, not one time in a bigger cauldron. Luckily, one compartment of her magical trunk had been large enough to fit all the cauldrons while they simmered. Simple metal discs with a Flagrante Curse on them made credible impressions of muggle electric stoves, obviating the need for open fires and allowing the month-long slow boil to take place in the room-sized space without air, fuel, smoke, or conflagrations becoming issues. And now had come the moment of truth; twelve stirs clockwise and the green of the Essence of Insanity, the blue of the Babbling Mushroom Extract, and the red of the Sphinx Blood mixed perfectly along with the remains of the base solvent into an odorless, colorless liquid indistinguishable from water. Not all twelve cauldrons held the same amount of potion, minor differences in her brewing over the long process resulting in varied amounts of solvent remaining and thus different amounts of the final product. In three cases all the solvent had boiled away, resulting in a black, near-useless, poisonous mess. Still, gathering and measuring the total potion produced left her quite satisfied; that much Veritaserum should cover Mister Borgin's costs and fee and still leave her with a nice profit.

The timing of her custom order's arrival was rather expedient; the small delay probably was due to her arranging its jumping through several destinations before coming to Hogwarts via a public owl service. Both her Head of House and the Headmaster had requested they meet after dinner and she had amassed quite a few secrets she wanted to keep to herself, thank you very much. But first things first; doing a good job was the only thing she trusted a dark wizard like Mister Borgin with. Not checking the device thoroughly for intentional tampering was just asking for trouble.

The dark brown object had a texture between stone and scales and was the size of a dragon's egg, if a bit wider. A bit heavy but not uncomfortably so, it was also hollow with a single opening at the bottom, three inches of the unusual material separating the interior cavity from the rest of the world. A flick of her thick Cherry wand and a good effort at the Magic-Revealing Charm revealed only the illusion tied to the outer layer of paint and wrapped around the device's entire body. From without she could uncover nothing else, which proved at least that the experimental concept worked. Casting again inside the cavity revealed the other six enchantments she'd requested and nothing else.

Several frowns and dozens of castings of revealing charms later, she'd been convinced any tampering from the unreliable Dark Artifact dealer either did not exist or was beyond her ability to detect. Shrugging, she got out of her four-poster bed and walked three beds over where a stunned Pansy Parkinson lay already dosed with Forgetfulness Potion. It was time for some live testing...

 **...**

Severus Snape looked down at his House's latest problem student sitting on the simple, uncomfortably hard chair he'd conjured across his desk. Apparently unaware of his scrutiny - something he did not believe for an instant - the girl was curiously examining the various preserved specimens all over his office. She'd shown similar curiosity in her visit last year, but this time she clearly focused on the rarest, most valuable, or most unusual displays, and not on the most visually disturbing as far too many idiots her age tended to do. Contrary to popular belief, those specimens in his office served a more important purpose than just unnerving all underage visitors (and quite a few adults), setting his preferred atmosphere, or showcasing his latest interest or experiment. That purpose had just been fulfilled in Miss Campbell's case, allowing him to evaluate her knowledge in Potions by her reactions to them alone, without need for unpleasant conversation with an intellectual inferior. It was one of the very rare cases a student's reactions had shown... adequate ability in the subject. Interesting.

"Idiotic as people your age tend to be, I'd hoped we would not meet beyond our one mandatory encounter in your first year." The girl abandoned her examination of a pickled Salamander floating in Firewalking Philter and turned her gaze to his, her curiosity undiminished and not a hint of fear present. "Unfortunately for you, here we are. Explain your presence here as you understand it." He ordered.

"I am the only muggle-born or muggle-raised student in this House for quite some time." She stated without the usual cringing most of his students were wont to display before him. "As such, those Slytherins who cling to our more moronic traditions are having... adverse reactions to my presence. Since the last time this happened was some fifty-six years ago and you, sir, have only been our Head of House for a decade, I must assume my presence means a discussion of the matter is in order, as well as formulation of potential solutions."

Cheeky brat. Though he supposed he should give her points for her acting skills; her copying his own tone and style of speech had been accurate enough. She wasn't wrong either, in a sense. Of course, he wasn't about to bandy words with a troublemaker, however clever she might be.

"Do not be flip with me!" He thundered. "Your little stunt with Mister Malfoy will cause trouble enough. Do you have any idea what your actions against his allies will do?"

"With respect, sir, I have no idea what you're talking about." Angered by the blatant lie even though he'd been expecting it, he fixed his eyes to hers and reached out to her mind. And for the first time in many a year, Severus Snape was quite shocked.

For a long time now, he considered himself one of the greatest practitioners of Occlumency in Wizarding Britain. He had to be; his job, his life, his very soul depended on it. Albus Dumbledore might be a shade better at resisting direct assault, Bellatrix Lestrange might have a gift at teaching others the discipline regardless of their emotional maturity, but he was the best at concealing his own emotions and thoughts. Or so he'd thought before reaching for Miss Campbell's mind. His Legilimency probe simply failed to find anything at all; no emotions, no thoughts, no mental defense that stopped or redirected him, only a void as if he was trying to read an empty room with no person inside. What the bloody hell?

"Don't insult my intelligence." He hissed, if only to gain some time to think. "Nobody is foolish enough to misplace his wand for three days Miss Campbell, even if only one of those days included lessons, and lessons that didn't require a wand at that. Let alone several Slytherin second-years at once."

"I wouldn't know, sir." She had the temerity to grin. "Quite a few people in my year have no more intelligence than your average cow. Miss Parkinson comes to mind."

How the hell was she doing it? Using his wand under his desk, he silently cast the Legilimency spell, then searched for memories of the event the hidden portraits had warned him about... nothing. Quite annoyed at a second-year student for blocking his efforts, he tried for a strong compulsion. It didn't work either. Wait a minute! Didn't the girl habitually run around with a Shield Charm on her at all times? Both said charm and most kinds of Mind Magic were normally invisible in their effects. It was conceivable, if extremely unlikely, that Campbell's shield had advanced enough for her to block his best compulsions with no apparent effort.

The Magic-Revealing Charm he cast next revealed an odd bubble of illusion magic around the girl's head. It was subtle and not very strong, similar to the glamours girls used to temporarily alter their facial features, hair color, and other such idiocy. Certainly weaker than a Disillusionment Charm or a Secrecy Charm strong enough to distort his mental searches - if even one that could do it had existed.

"Detention, Miss Campbell!" He shouted, his patience with her at an end. "You will be cleaning cauldrons by hand till the end of the week!"

"As you wish, sir." Her reply was the first time she'd shown real emotion, raw annoyance mixed with disappointment. "I see my belief on our own Head of House's fairness towards Slytherins was in error."

He let her go despite that comment, too deep in thought to bother. She was right in any case, and he had to talk to Dumbledore posthaste.

 **...**

"I see what you mean, Severus." The Headmaster said as soon as his meeting with the girl was over. "My own attempts failed as dismally as your own did."

"And? Do you have an idea how she did it?" The Disillusionment Charm Dumbledore had cast on him had been powerful and perfect enough that he'd been able to remain utterly unseen during the meeting even to his own eyes. Even more impressive for the Headmaster being capable of casting it wandlessly, it hadn't changed a thing; his mental probes had all failed.

"No idea." The ancient sorcerer smiled. "Certainly the minor Invisibility Charm around Miss Campbell's head could not have done it, though it must have been hiding the enchanted item that did. I could have broken it with a Revealing spell, but to what end? Such charms are not illegal and we could not have confiscated whatever it hid because our attempts at invading her mind certainly were."

"You haven't suddenly grown a fondness for the law, have you?" Snape said scathingly.

"Justice and the good of Wizarding Britain sometimes trump privacy, Severus. I doubt however that this is the case here." Dubledore shook his head and chuckled. "No, I suspect Miss Campbell noticed our occasional scan as we've been trying to resolve the very serious matters of the past two years, and was clever enough to come up with something to block us."

"And you have no interest in what it is, do you?" The younger man growled. He'd often been on the receiving end of the Headmaster's scrutiny many times in the past, after all.

"Of course I do. Personal curiosity however is no reason to further violate the girl's privacy. I remain convinced she's not the perpetrator of any attacks, either of the copycat hits or of the true assault on Mister Filch." He frowned pensively. "Should that change, we both know where she sleeps. While often being more intrusive than I'd prefer in the pursuit of my duties, I'd like to believe I'm no more a peeping Tom than is required - so to speak. In any case, whatever it is she used would not be suitable for your purposes, Severus. While your old acquaintances might be no more able to penetrate it than we were in this first attempt, I should not have to remind you shielding one's mind without being subtle about it is of little use before our enemies."

Severus Snape sneered at the Headmaster's dispensed wisdom. Albus Dumbledore might try to limit his acts of questionable morality to what he could easily justify to himself and others but the Potions Master knew well how very Dark and manipulative the Grand Sorcerer could be at times. In a way, his latest problem student had been lucky her little trick was too obvious to be of use in his machinations.

Not that he didn't trust the man - he did, with his very soul. He just had no illusions about how terrible a tyrant could be when all his decisions were made for the good of the people and under the aegis of necessity, real or imagined. One had only to look at how Dumbledore really treated those enemies that fell in his hands to understand how the ancient sorcerer worked. One reason among many Severus Snape was a bitter man was the widespread belief he'd escaped punishment when he'd unbreakably vowed to sacrifice his very life performing a task he absolutely hated under the gaze of a relentless jailor that rarely slept and was as close to omniscient within his domain as a man could ever be.

 **...**

It had worked! Well and truly!

Valeria was rather excited. Having entered a situation where use of Mind Magic against her had been a foregone conclusion, the device had shielded her perfectly. It was the first time she'd tried something new, a design of her own that could be found in no book and nobody to her knowledge had used before, and her invention had functioned as expected.

The inspiration for the helm had actually come from watching one of Claude's fantasy board games during the summer. One of the nerdier of her brother's friends had been playing a homicidal midget character with an old cauldron for a hat. When questioned, he'd only said the cauldron had had a high lead content. Claude had later explained that, in their board game, many mental or revealing spells could be stopped by a thin layer of lead.

Now Valeria didn't know about lead - she'd never heard of any nonprecious metal have an effect on real magic - but certain magical substances were spell resistant. Dragonhide was used in Auror and Hit-Wizard armor, protective gloves for potions, the insulating layer on her magic trunk and so on and so forth. Completely covering one's head in dragonhide ought to diminish Mind Magics that targeted it and with Lockhart and two Legilimens in the school that certainly had become a priority. Unfortunately, covering her face with dragonhide had the tiny drawback of leaving her blind. That flaw had left her stumped for a time, until she'd remembered Harry's Invisibility Cloak. Objects didn't have to be directly charmed to be rendered invisible; they could be wrapped up in something else that provided invisibility. She'd tested it and her potions gloves became invisible under the Cloak just like everything else.

That's what she'd ordered from Mister Borgin then; a closed dragonhide helmet with an outer layer that was enchanted invisible so the helmet itself would fade from view and not block her sight. Of course, the idea had grown a bit in the making; she'd asked for multiple layers of dragonhide coated in jinx-repelling varnish, and additional comfort and temperature charms added on the inside to make it easier on the wearer. Last but not least, a modified bubblehead charm for the helm's interior to ensure "accidents" like the garroting gas in her last return trip on the Hogwarts Express would no longer be an issue. Malfoy had the right idea in at least that much; wealth was a great resource if you weren't afraid to use it.

And now that the device had been ready and tested, it was time to take care of a certain Defense Professor.


	38. Midnight Meetings

**Urazz: Valeria has been brewing illegal/controlled potions and selling them in Knockturn Alley. She only needed enough money for the initial potions kits and ingredients. One more instance where the too easy classes resulted in more free time for dangerous students.**

 **Guest: Ron and Neville are behind due to their wands, yes. Especially since Ron's is broken. As for the possible crimes of Hagrid and Sirius, they'd have had far lighter sentences, especially since nobody was harmed. Still a good point though.**

 **lightning king: Dumbledore won against an Elder-Wand-wielding Grindelwald in a fair fight when all the magical governments of Europe could not. That's what made him known as the strongest wizard in the world (whether he really is we don't know). The rest of the world doesn't think him infallible though for precisely the same reason - he could have dueled Grindelwald and stopped the war years earlier, but didn't. As for Voldemort, he started his campaign at a much younger age than Grindelwald and had half a century less experience than Dumbledore when they dueled. Given time he would have been as strong or stronger, and being immortal would have given him all the time in the world. But yes, he was a much smaller problem than Grindelwald initially.**

 **DaughterofTerpsichore: Let's hope you sympathize when the darker stuff comes up later.**

 **ro781727: Hmm, karmic punishment due to plot vs intentional smackdown. Either case, we won't be seeing it until Valeria has some free time to set it all up.**

 **Son of Whitebeard: Legilimency is only one aspect of Mind Magic; mental penetration. There's also memory modification (obliviation, extraction, false memories and the like), compulsion (from animal command to muggle-repelling), emotion modification (cheering charms for example), glamours and visions (such as the Twins' Dream Charms), mental curses (imperio, insanity curse, enchanted sleep), infusing objects with virtual intelligence, and last but not least Occlumency. There's also potions with mental effects, which don't fall under the category of mind magic because they're brewn, not cast.**

 **StevenG: Valeria won't be getting such armor, at least not yet. She's a growing girl, especially with her disguises, and dragonhide does not resize.**

 **Disclaimer: did Harry have Parselmouth abilities and yet never used them to his benefit? If yes, Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling, not me.**

 **...**

It was early April and the entire school was walking on eggshells. Over the past two months there have been half a dozen attacks. Justing Finch-Flechley of Hufflepuff had been found petrified in the Trophy Room in the first week of March. Then Percy Weasley was discovered catatonic practically on Madam Pomfrey's doorstep ten days later; rumor had it that he'd been visiting one of the other victims in St Mungo's through the Hospital Wing's Floo connection. Moaning Myrtle in the second floor girl's bathroom had been reduced to a blackened, unresponsive husk only days later. That was when the panic had really set in; what kind of dark magic could hurt someone already dead?

Even as the Houses drew lines in the sand and blamed each other, a black market of counterfeit protective charms sprung up like wildfire. A simple Magic-Revealing Charm was enough to know most of them were not even enchanted, let alone useful. To everyone's surprise, Lockhart had enough initiative to stop their lessons on the Memory Extraction Charm which according to him was very useful in the investigation side of Auror work, and start them on glamours or even the Disillusionment Charm for those that could manage it. A good disguise, he said, would not only be instrumental in undercover missions but also potentially conceal the identity of any students of Muggleborn status and prevent the Heir of Slytherin from targeting them. Needless to say, within the week most of the upper years were only blurs in the corridors and many other students spent hours each day altering their features with simpler spells. This only added to the chaos; with tensions between the Houses at an all-time high, it was not long before some students started dueling in the corridors. Every faculty member but Lockhart (who didn't care) and Flitwick (who could see through them) was demanding the Headmaster ban glamours and concealment spells inside Hogwarts. Valeria herself had vowed to get the Disillusionment Charm to work at least once before the end of term, but the only ones in their year to pull it off even partially had been Tracey, and a Ravenclaw boy named Terry Boot.

After Harry clearing his name with the help of the Minister of Magic himself, the student body had started turning against Slytherin House as a whole. Apparently, they'd either already forgotten Valeria had been a victim, or thought her quick recovery had been because the Heir had gone easy on her. Rubbish, of course; if there was one person the Heir would love to get his or her hands on, it would be Slytherin's resident mudblood. That was why she along with several other younger students in their classes had Tracey cast her barely functional partial disillusionment on them each and evey time they met. Annoying though it may be to walk around as a garish, rainbow-hued blur, it beat the alternative by a mile.

The situation changed again only that morning, where a petrified Sally-Anne Perks and a blackened, unresponsive Bloody Baron had been found near the entrance to the dungeons. The Hufflepuff second-year witch had been on her way to her common room after a detention with Snape, and had obviously become a target because she was too bad at Charms to conceal herself. Rumor was that Snape had asked Slytherin House's resident ghost to escort her, and that the Bloody Baron had fallen in her defense. Mere hours later and while the school was still in shock Donaghan Tremlett, an older Gryffindor repeating his seventh year in an attempt to fix his abysmal NEWT scores, had been discovered catatonic only a few dozen feet from the gargoyle that protected the entrance to the Headmaster's own office.

"I wonder..." Tracey said as the three girls lay huddled in their dormitory, the terrible events the only thing in their minds.

"Another rumor, Trace?" Daphne said tiredly. The Pureblood Princess was no less worried than anyone else, the black circles under her eyes evidence of several sleepless nights. "I can't see how it'll help now. Our House's reputation has gone to the dogs, the school's about to become a warzone, our Defense Professor is arming everyone with Auror-level Charms and plans to have us hunt down the Heir, and our best friend is too busy brewing potions within her own trunk to worry about being a prime target!"

"OW!" Valeria complained eloquently. It wasn't her fault though; Daphne had just kicked her in the shin.

"Not a rumor, no..." The brunette bit her lip and then went on. "Doesn't it strike you as odd that the Heir would use two different methods of attack, neither of which triggers the Dark magic detectors in the school's defensive enchantments?" As every Slytherin knew, their dormitory would report the casting of dark enough spells and even mark the identity of the caster. The Bone Shattering Curse used against Valeria in her first year had really been at the limit of what one could do without the Headmaster immediately being informed. It was only logical for such a warning system to extend to the rest of the school.

"So you think what..., that there are two different culprits?" Valeria said ignoring her aching leg as she stirred the boiling mixture in the third cauldron.

"It totally makes sense." Tracey insisted. "Think about it; the first type of attacks started back near the beginning of the year. Why would the perpetrator change methods halfway through? It's not as if anyone found how he's doing it."

"Maybe because Val recovered so fast?" Daphne said and the other two girls stared at her with meaning. They'd decided discussions of their extracurricular activities would only be had out in the grounds after they'd all confirmed they were too far to be overheard and Presence and Magic Revealing charms had been cast by everyone present to reveal anyone spying on them through magic. They'd shared some details of their Yule raid to St Mungo's with Daphne during one such meeting and ever since the clever Pureblood scion had been trying to analyse the ramifications of that illegal mission.

"Can't be that." The brunette insisted. "Otherwise why keep using said method in later attacks?"

"Peace, Trace." Daphne said, raising her hands in surrender. "We can discuss it with the boys and see where that gets us. Contrary to what Professor Snape has been preaching, they're not complete dunderheads."

"You're only saying that because Weasley keeps beating you at Chess." Their friend accused snidely, then smirked. "Aww! Is poor little Greengrass having a crush on some mangy Gryffindork?"

They didn't get much done after that. They were too busy fixing the damage to the dormitory before Pansy could tell on them to their Head of House.

 **...**

Despite the other person in the room with him being nearly two feet shorter, Eekins Rookwood was scared.

His uncle had shared many outlandish stories with him about floating brains, unearthly whispers, and liquid love bubbling merrily in giant cauldrons when he was younger, but nothing compared with two almond-shaped, coal-red eyes glowing in the dark four feet abouve the floor, the body they belonged to either perfectly invisible or entirely absent. Not only did the alien eyes give off the impression they could see to the depths of his soul, but they were also real. His uncle's stories on the other hand had faded in half-remembered anecdotes after the man had been sent to Azkaban for crimes committed during the War.

"It would seem I am winning in our little game." The other figure said in a high-pitched, sibilant hiss. "We both have five victims under our belt, but one of yours has already recovered. Don't worry though. It's only now that things are getting interesting." Then the alien presence laughed.

Eekins shuddered at the casual cruelty the Heir of Slytherin displayed. He was far from innocent himself - after all, he'd had other reasons for striking down that Ravenclaw Prefect when he'd seen her coming back from a late night date with her idiotic Gryffindor boyfriend. Her being a mudblood had only been a bonus. But the Heir's alien voice, unnerving countenance, and casual way she'd congratulated him on realizing lasting torment of his victims could have a larger impact than outright murder... once more Eekins thought he'd bitten more than he could chew.

When the Heir had approached him after the first petrification, he'd thought it a joke. The otherworldly aura had seemed only a simple glamour back then, for the Heir had obviously been a younger girl. Eekins Rookwood's opinion of girls had been as bad as that on mudbloods once, but after the Heir had uncovered his secrets and made some suggestions that had chilled him to his soul, he'd realized there were exceptions. Whatever else she might be, he only existed for the Heir's amusement, not the other way around. Since then he'd halfheartedly continued with his original plan only because it increased his own life expectancy.

"See, Dumbledore will soon no longer be a problem. And then the way will be open for me to finally cleanse the school from the mudbloods and other filth." The hellish red orbs floated closer, then moved behind him. Eekins didn't dare turn to follow them.

"You know, I might even reward you despite you falsely claiming my name." The hissing voice chuckled. "I had never expected a distraction to be so useful in throwing the mudblood-loving fool off my scent, nor for any other student's plan to be simultaneously so viciously simple and yet so effective." The eyes floated before him again, staring up at his own invisible face. Somehow, he knew they could see him despite his Uncle's last gift. "You would like my reward, wouldn't you Rookwood junior?"

"I-I would..."

"Liar." She laughed again and it was horrible. "Your uncle might have been able to hide a thing or two from me were he present, but you're not him. As I said though, don't worry. Many people your age got cold feet before but eventually came to see the... error of their ways. I'll even be gentler to you than you were to the Ravenclaw mudblood."

Then and there Eekins Rookwood cursed the day he'd first thought to use one of his uncle's oldest stories, to get back at the mudblood polluting his House and others of her ilk. It had not been a prophetic dream that had pushed him into it during his nap on the Hogwarts Express, but a terrifying nightmare.

 **...**

"It is out of my hands, Dumbledore." The Minister of Magic said sadly. "And really, what did you expect? The Chamber of Secrets open again, far more students attacked than last time, and not a hint as to who is responsible. The Board of Governors is convinced to go ahead with your suspension and frankly, I can't blame them." The portly, aging wizard shook his head and had to scramble for his falling bowler hat as a result. The Headmaster returned it to him with a flick of his wand and he nodded in thanks. "At least there are two bright spots in all of this. An innocent man being exonerated through student action, and the lack of deaths. Why didn't you suggest a Vow before, Dumbledore? Hagrid's your man after all, and if you'd been seen doing something, the Board wouldn't be suspending you now."

How could he explain to Cornelius all the background politics that tied his hands, Dumbledore wondered. He remembered him as a student; he'd never been very bright, or very good in the deeper level of politics. No, Cornelius was both too naive and too focused on his own carreer to see how Lucius Malfoy and his people had ensured his election merely to have someone they could easily control. It would have been far better if he'd remained in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophies where his Transfiguration skills and facility with Repair Charms would have served him well.

"If the Board wishes me to retire Cornelius, of course I will go." Twelve wizards from old pureblood families, most of them with no contact with the current generation of students, and little appreciation of recent changes in the Wizarding World. Naturally, Lucius Malfoy had managed to convince them on this issue; despite being one of the youngest members, he was certainly the wealthiest and most politically active. "Though I would have expected to be contacted by them, at least, if not meeting with them directly. Don't you see it as rather hasty?"

"A mistake, that's what it is." Cornelius sighed. "Lucius owled me this morning with their decision but has not turned up in person yet. No responce from the others either. I don't understand..."

Unfortunately, Dumbledore did. Lucius Malfoy certainly didn't care about the muggleborn students. In fact, he'd be happy to see them go and not come back not due to the Heir but due to fear of the Heir. He was doing his best to prevent him from catching the culprit - something he couldn't do forever. He didn't have to, though. If the school was closed, even temporarily, that would be all the parents would remember and the muggles among them would likely choose not to have their children return. The Heir would vanish through the simple expedient of performing no more attacks and with enough public outcry and political pressure future muggleborns might not be accepted in Hogwarts. Oh, the Ministry would likely organize an alternative such as private tutoring. That however would be more expensive for the muggle families, limit what their children could learn and, most importantly, not allow them to freely interact with their peers from the Wizarding World. Eventually the muggleborns all over Wizarding Britain would become third-class citizens with no contacts, little skill, and no prospects - exactly as people like Lucius Malfoy would like them to be.

The situation was not improved by the potential existence of two separate culprits. Dumbledore's suspicions would have fallen on Tom Riddle's wraith but with him banished from the castle last year and according to reliable sources hiding in Albania at this time, the only alternative was both unlikely and horrendous. It also wasn't something he could check for without prior research. Maybe Lucius' attempts to remove him from the position of Headmaster would afford him a rare opportunity.

Seen as a tactical retreat in Lucius' mind, he and his people would never complain about their opponent's brief disappearrance. And a few weeks' free time checking on the specifics of a Dark Art he'd never dared study might shed some light in the shadows.

 **...**

"Harry mate, this is the kind of thing you share with your friends!" Ron Weasley chastised the Boy-Who-Lived while the rest of them looked on. "You didn't think it could help? Percy's been taken to St. Mungo's after the bloody Heir of bloody Slytherin attacked him! Maybe if we'd known what you did two bloody months ago we'd have solved this bloody mystery already and he wouldn't have been..."

"Ron I..." Harry was not doing well enduring Weasley's angry tirade. He wasn't even trying to fight back, not really. "How could I have known..."

"How could you have known that a bloody disembodied voice only you could hear was threatening to kill people?" The redhead stared at his friend incredulously. "Because it bloody said so, Harry! And right after it did, the bloody attacks happened! And don't start telling me that you only heard it for half of them! Once was bloody well enough!"

"I think he gets it, Weasley." Tracey said drily and rolled her eyes. "The question is, why would a snake be connected to the attacks, and how."

"A snake?" Ron, Neville and Harry immediately asked.

"Harry's a parselmouth, we've known for months that snakes can talk to him even if they really shouldn't be able to, it's a voice only he can hear, Slytherin's symbol is a snake, the Heir of Slytherin is involved in the attacks." The brunette explained to the three Gryffindors in a slow, elaborate tone as if speaking to young children. The other two Slytherin girls had needed no help to arrive to the same conclusion; being the symbol of their House, snakes were around them every day so their minds had needed little prompting in that direction.

"Well, these attacks are rather nasty. Someone was even killed last time." Valeria mused. Daphne snorted at that and Ron glowered at her. "So the Monster of Slytherin is probably a wizard-killer; I can't see our Founder settling for anything less. There are only nine known wizard-killers and only one of them is a snake."

"A Basilisk!" the three girls said in concert. Neville and Ron gasped, but Harry just looked on in confusion.

"How could a snake be so dangerous?" He asked. "I mean, if it bit you or something but... snakes don't move very fast - you can outrun them. And it'd be kind of obvious in a school."

"Gaze that kills, or petrifies of you see it indirectly. Poison that destroys life and magic. Skin as tough and magically resistant as dragonhide." Tracey said, counting on her fingers. "Oh and they grow to be fifty feet long, on average. My family makes money breeding dangerous beasts but even we wouldn't raise basilisks if they were legal. Maybe if you asked Hagrid nicely..."

"How's it getting through the school then?" Neville spoke up. "And why aren't people dead? Not that I want them to..." he said when Ron turned his glower from Harry to him.

"Those aren't the greatest problems." Valeria stated confidently. She'd been thinking about Tracey's suggestion and more and more it looked like the brunette had been right. "The problem is what we do about the attacks the Basilisk isn't responsible for. Harry, you didn't hear any snakes before any attacks that resulted in victims in a coma, right? Because I'm pretty sure a curse was responsible for those - that's what Magic Revealing Charms showed."

"No snakes around for those attacks, no. Does that mean two culprits?"

"Yep." Tracey confirmed. "That, or a culprit unstable enough to go from a mysterious curse nobody can trace to a magical beast a bunch of second-years found out about with ten minutes of simple logic and having read the most well-known book of magical creatures in modern times."

"Too bad we have no way to trace them." Daphne said and everyone else nodded. Well, almost everyone. Harry seemed to be deep in thought.

"I can talk to snakes!" he finally exclaimed. "That's how we'll find them!"

"What, you plan to stay out late at night and ask the Basilisk to lead you to its master?" Tracey responded in her usual abrasive manner.

"I was thinking more about the spell Malfoy used." Harry's eyes gleamed with excitement. "Conjured or not, I talked to them after that duel. And if Malfoy can conjure that many, the six of us can get enough lookouts to cover the entire school! Lookouts that could overhear the Heir too, if he spoke in Parseltongue."

"Wait a minute mate! I'm conjuring no bloody snakes!" Ron protested. "How'd you prevent the rest of the school from panicking anyway, or the Heir from seeing them? Unless you could hide them or something... wait. Are those glamours Lockhart taught us only useful for girls and Malfoy doing their hair or Lockhart polishing his teeth, or do they work on snakes too?"

"Ladies and gentlemen," Valeria announced "We seem to have a workable plan. Unless something else comes up, like that house elf's information, let's get to it before another attack happens."


	39. Unseen, not Untouchable

**SteveG: Self-important asses are the worst kind! Depending on how much interaction a Horcrux has had with its wielders and how long it'd had to build up a "charge", it can do a lot of things to influence the world around it. The Diary is the oldest and has had the most interaction so being able to influence others to take it is easily possible. As for werewolves, they are the results of a powerful curse on a human, not actual magical creatures. This will probably come up in time. :)**

 **Urazz: Things degraded much worse than in canon because there's a fairly big factor drawing attention from all the bigots and Voldemort-related stuff; a muggleborn in Slytherin. That she's both friends with Harry Potter and a bit Dark is only making things worse.**

 **ro781727: Of course he's a sociopath. Not on the level of the Lestranges though.**

 **Phillip: Valeria has neither the Sword of Gryffindor, nor a prophesy working in her favor, nor Dumbledore's support. Just saying... As for the rooster though, compulsions would work.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter; JK Rowling does. If I did, there probably wouldn't be scheduling clashes in lessons of the same year when any student might have wanted to choose both electives in question, even if they were his only two electives.**

 **...**

"Are the snakes all set?" Ron asked. The redhead had been the last to manage _Serpentsortia_ well enough for their purposes, and had grumbled all the time they were conjuring and handling them. Because both size and complexity mattered in Conjuration they had been trying for the smallest snakes they knew of, common gadren ones no longer than ten inches or so. Since Malfoy could manage to conjure a six-foot viper for over ten minutes, they were hoping something hundreds of times less massive would last for a few days at least.

"Yeah." Harry said, collapsing onto a chair. "I've been all over the castle under the Cloak, checking up on them. Never thought indirect spying would be so much work."

"That's because we aren't using listening charms like proper spies." Daphne commented as she read through a couple of pamphlets with great interest. Valeria and Tracey had already done so and made their decisions too, but Neville still had reservations. The timid Gryffindor was only slowly coming out of his shell but had a long way to go yet. At least he had no problem approaching friends for help, like some other boys she could name, though why his best friends were in Slytherin she had no idea. Weren't the Lions supposed to be a friendlier, more closely-knit bunch? Had none of them tried to help a fellow Gryffindor when she, Daphne, and Tracey worked through all those lists and reference sheets to help him with this one very important task?

"What's that you got there, Val?" Ron asked with a smirk. "Another super-secret Slytherin plan to purge the entire school of undesirables with dark magic?"

"Oh it's way worse than that, Weasley." Tracey smirked back. "We're doing research on the electives we have to pick for next year."

"Great!" The boy groaned. "From summoning snakes to academics. Can this day get any worse?"

"You're in a school. The best magical school in Europe, according to some. What did you expect?" Valeria said with a scowl. Ron's lackadaisical attitude had annoyed her since she first met the boy. "Do you realize how important this choice is for the rest of your life?"

"Well, excuse me for not wanting even more lessons on my plate!" He shouted back. "Potions is already hard enough, and Transfiguration homework takes me an entire hour to finish for each lesson!"

"The day has twenty-four hours." She growled back. "You only need eight for sleep at most, maybe two for meals, an average of four for lessons during the weekday. What the bloody hell are you doing the remaining ten hours, Weasley? And don't tell me 'homework'. If you only study about an hour for every lesson, Saturday alone would cover it."

"Can we not fight about this?" Harry pleaded. "Catching the culprit is more important, don't you think?"

"No, Harry." Valeria replied to the Boy-Who-Lived firmly. "Lessons are as important as your ultimate goals, because it's through them that we achieve anything. Remember last year that you, Neville, and Ron here spent many hours in the library searching about Flamel? Without studying we'd never have known what the Dark Wanker had been looking for, or been able to beat all those challenges and confront him."

"When you put it like that..." His eyes went wide when what else she'd said finally registered. "The Dark... Wanker?"

"He's not my lord, and 'Voldemort' is obviously a pseudonym." She smirked. "So when someone pointed out that he took Quirrel from behind..."

"GAAH!" Daphne jumped back, both hands uselessly covering her ears. "Someone obliviate me! That's a mental image I really, really didn't need. Can we talk about something, anything, else?"

"We were talking about electives." Neville quickly said, face pale. Daphne, Ron, and Harry quickly nodded. Only Tracey was having trouble holding back a high-pitched giggle.

"Arithmancy, Care of Magical Creatures, Divination, Runes, Muggle Studies." Daphne said, counting on her fingers while still glaring at Valeria.

"Divination and Muggle Studies." Ron said and Tracey snorted. "Easy OWLs, from what I hear."

"I've had enough of muggle life." Harry said darkly and Valeria nodded solemnly. Before the mind-altering potions she'd brewn for him to use on his relatives, his life with them had been a living Hell. She didn't know what would happen this Summer either; changing someone's personality as much as she had to to make the Dursleys friendly with their nephew was dangerous, whether one used potions or compulsions. While the minds of people capable of a decade of child abuse weren't a concern to her, Harry being punished for their being reduced to vegetables certainly was. "Any ideas? Knowing of any danger in advance via Divination sounds helpful."

"Depends on what you want to do in the future." Daphne frowned thoughtfully. "Father would be proud if the family had another Duelist, but I have my reservations. Arithmancy is part of just about every branch of magic in addition to its own unique uses so it's a no-brainer. Runes maybe - having another way to use magic beyond wands and potions is quite useful. Muggle Studies is a certainty, though." The rest of them stared at the Pureblood Princess at that, jaws halfway to the floor. "What?" She demanded. "If you thoung a pureblood from a Dark family would avoid that, you're dead wrong. I'd bet anything Dark wizards know more about muggles than the average Ministry worker. For one thing, knowing how to hide in muggle-heavy areas means the Ministry has a harder time finding you and even if they do, the Aurors can't raid you without a lot of work to prevent a breach of the Statute of Secrecy - that's security and warning system both. Then there's all the ways you can make money by exploiting muggle economy that the Ministry neither taxes nor bothers to look into closely. You think the Malfoys retain their fortune despite everything they spend on bribes without hidden sources of income?"

Okay, that made total sense. And now that Valeria thought about it, hadn't she helped Father in his shady deals by providing a cheap magical purse whose extended space was undetectable to muggle authorities? Even at only a few hundred pounds at a time some commodities could net a year's wages' worth of profit per trip, all for maybe week's worth of her allowance.

"My family's into breeding magical creatures, so Care was my first choice." Tracey said. "It's also helpful for many other jobs, from Healers to Aurors. Hogwarts teachers too, what with a Basilisk inside the school. I don't think I can cut it in Arithmancy though, so Runes it is. Some of my family's stables are reinforced with Rune-based enchantments - many a beast can shrug off or even ignore spells outright so that's another thing Runes are good for."

"C-Care's what I chose, too." Neville said a bit uncertainly. "It's complementary to Herbology. All kinds of fertilizers, pesticides and plant tonics come from magical creatures, you know. But I don't know what else I should choose - my whole family wrote to me with their suggestions."

"Don't worry Neville. I'm sure we could help you." Harry said immediately, even if a moment ago he'd been unsure about his own choices he tried to help anyway. Valeria didn't know whether to applaud his loyalty or shake her head at how much harm a helpful attitude paired with ignorance could cause. "What do you think, Ron? Anything sound interesting?"

"My bloody head hurts just listening to those descriptions." The redhead frowned. "It would be cool to be an auror though, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah... it's not as if we aren't already doing their job." Five of their group snickered but Valeria actually laughed.

"Ron, your habitual laziness knows no bounds." She shook her head. "A lazy auror is a dead auror because no Dark wizard or witch worth their salt could even share that flaw and survive dabbling in the Dark Arts. They're driven to succeed through any means and that's why they do what they do."

"You think I can't do it? I can do anything I put my mind into!" The redhead shouted, face crimson. Ignoring Harry's attempts to calm him down, he spoke on nastily. "And that description of Dark wizards? Sounds exactly like you, if you ask me." Right, because she should let Harry be abused during summer. Or allow Malfoy to take his moronic prejudices out on anyone he can get his hands on. Have the Dark Wanker return to power through an artifact, or let Dumbledore and his idiotic beliefs destroy the heritage of the Wizarding World. No, thank you.

"Whatever, Weasley." She said, annoyed. "I'll bet you a hundred galleons that you and Harry won't do well in the lessons that'll help you be an Auror. You're good in Defense and can manage in Charms and Transfiguration, but you'll be poisoned in your first mission with your Potions marks. Someone will mail you a letter with a rune-based exploding hex and you'll die, or be eaten by a Manticore in a raid, since your first elective choices were Muggle Studies and Divination because they're easy." She laughed again. "Tell you what. Pick Runes, Care, and any one other elective you want. Do well in the first two and fix your Potions marks by this time next year - without your other marks dropping, mind you - and you win those one hundred Galleons. Fail though, and you have to stand on top of the Gryffindor table during dinner and shout 'I am the stupidest student, ever!' for the whole school to hear. Deal?"

"You're on, Campbell!" He said with a gleam in his eye. She was all but certain their other friends had noticed what she was doing but no-one spoke a word. Even Harry nodded to her where Ron couldn't see but she didn't need that approval. If she had to use his family's poverty to make Ron into a better person, she'd do it again in a heartbeat. "Hey, what electives are you choosing?"

"All of them, Weasley." She said, smile widening at his gobsmacked expression. "The future Grand Sorceress can't have any gaps in her magical knowledge now, can she?"

"That's... that's Dumbledore's job!"

"He won't be alive forever." She smirked. "Besides, I'f fairly sure he's not a Grand Sorceress, Weasley. The beard is kind of a giveaway."

 **...**

"Sit."

For all that Professor Snape professed to hate students, Valeria couldn't help but notice she was seeing him rather often outside of classes. He'd called her once again to his interesting, potions-ingredient-filled office in the dungeons and this time she could not think of anything wrong she and her friends have done. Summoning the smallest snakes they knew, shrinking them down to an inch or two long, covering them with one of Tracey's chameleon glamours, putting a compulsion on them not to heed any Parseltongues except Harry, and finally having Harry give them their instructions wasn't against the school rules.

She knew it wasn't; she'd actually checked.

"Miss Campbell, we've brought you here to discuss a rather delicate matter." Said the Deputy Headmistress. Though after Dumbledore's suspension Valeria should probably think of her as Headmistress, she knew she wouldn't. However competent the older witch might be in her own specialty, she seemed to have a woeful lack of initiative in anything else. Had Valeria been in her place, she'd have gotten the faculty together, given them a couple hundred innocuous items to enchant with multiple tracking and detection charms, then hidden them in each and every room and corridor in the castle. That was essentially what she and her friends were doing crudely through the snakes and Harry's Parselmouth skills. Professor McGonagal had available a dozen witches and wizards with masteries in every subject between them; she could certainly have done much better, if only she'd tried.

"Daydream in your own time, Miss Campbell." Her Head of House said drily. "Right now we want to talk to you about your electives."

Oh, that. The argument of the day before had slipped her mind due to everything else on her plate. Had so little time been enough for the Professors to look into her choices when the deadline was the end of the year? Why would Professors McGonagal and Snape even want to talk to her in person? She went through the event in her mind, trying so see if she'd done anything detention-worthy... Hmm, that bet with Ron might have been taken the wrong way...

"Miss Campbell, I'll be frank." The Deputy Headmistress said. "Picking all five electives will leave you with twelve subjects. That's the maximum possible - a heavy burden for someone your age. How will you even study for them all?"

"Through correct use of my time, Professor." She rolled her eyes when the two adults exchanged disbelieving looks. "Three hours per subject on average per week, seven hours per weekday. Another seven hours of study and seven hours of sleep leaves three hours per day for meals and social interaction. Twenty-eight hours total over the weekend for various personal projects or extracurricular activities."

"However neatly you overload your schedule," Professor Snape begun in his usual sardonic tone "...the truth remains that there are scheduling clashes in several subjects, Miss Campbell. It is physically impossible for you to go to all those classes and thus you have to drop some of them."

"That's odd." The Professors were obviously lying. The question was why. Hmm... if she earnestly pointed out the problem with what her Head of House had just said without complaining, maybe they'd let something slip. "Any two subjects being at the same time doesn't make sense. It would prevent students from attending them both, even if those were their only two electives."

The two adults exchanged looks again and sighed. Then the Deputy Headmistress spoke once more.

"Young lady, there are always problems with scheduling all seven years' worth of lessons. That is why we called you here, after all. You have to take fewer subjects - there's no other way." OK, if they wanted it like that so be it.

"The Hogwarts charter gives students the right to choose all available electives, Professor. It even requires of the faculty to aid them in such by all means, magical or mundane, if the student is capable." She matched the older witch stare for stare. "And since I know of at least three students that took all twelve OWLs in the recent past, I don't see what the problem is."

"You do?" Professor Snape challenged with the barest hint of a smirk. "Who were they, then?"

"Bill Weasley, Barty Crouch Junior, Tom Marvolo Riddle." All hints of a smirk vanished outright, to be replaced by an expressionless mask. Hadn't expected her to have had the matter researched, had they? "Percy Weasley might even do it this year too, if he recovers soon enough to sit for his OWLs."

"Very well, Miss Campbell." McGonagal said in clear dismissal. "We'll consider your request."

 **...**

"That girl is quite a handful." Minerva said after the cheeky brat had left. "Frightfully intelligent though."

"May I assume you'll be writing to the Ministry for the permissions required, then?" Severus was uncertain whether that was a good or a bad thing. On one hand he saw some hints of a very old friend in that girl, especially during his Potions class with Slytherin and Gryffindor. On the other there were just as many alarming things about her, not the least of which had been that comment of hers referring to events fifty-six years ago.

"As much as correspondence with the Ministry annoys me, both her academic record so far and the school charter warrant it." His only tentative friend among the faculty grinned. "I daresay certain long-standing school records are about to be broken."

That wasn't a problem; more power to her, if Campbell could really challenge even one of Albus' accomplishments. What really worried him was that the only event of note that happened in Hogwarts fifty-six years ago was Tom Riddle entering the magical world.

 **...**

Under the Cloak of Invisibility and with Silencing Charms on his shoes, Harry Potter was running very fast but also very stealthily through the many shifting corridors and moving staircases of the castle. Neville was in the infirmary after a rare Potions mishap, Ron had gone to see his brother along with the rest of his family after Percy had reacted well to the latest dose of recovery potions, and he had no idea how to get into the Slytherin common room. So when the Snakes had informed him about suspicious activity near the defunct seventh-floor bathroom, he'd set out on his own.

Heart hammering in his chest, he was trying to remember all the preparations their group had come up with for just such an eventuality. Silcencing Charm to be stealthy, partial Featherlight Charm on himself to increase his leaping distance and speed, Engorging Charm to gain a foot of height and a significant boost in strength just in case the Heir tried brawling, Shield Charm already up to block unexpected attacks, protective gloves from his Potions kit to block any minor magic on his hands such as Disarmers... was he forgetting anything?

A near-undetectable shrunk snake hissed a warning to him as he turned around the corner and the abandoned room came into sight. The door looked like it had once been boarded up but now stood open so he tiptoed closer, wand at the ready. Peeking around the doorframe while holding as much of his body as he could behind the solid wall, he barely noticed the disturbance in the dark room. His eyesight might need corrective lenses or glasses, but he had trained to spot the tiny Snitch all across the massive Quidditch field; noticing the blurry outline within the room, he tensed.

Someone near-invisible stood over a small, iron-bound trunk made of studded dragonhide, struggling to open its numerous locks. They didn't look like they were wearing an invisibility cloak like his; their human outline was too distinctive for them to be under such a sheet-like artifact. Harry tried to suppress his nerves. The only other wizard he knew to be capable of invisibility without the help of a cloak was Albus Dumbledore. Admittedly the Headmaster could fade in and out of sight entirely without even an incantation, but even a barely seen blur might indicate a much older, much more capable wizard.

The trunk opened and an unseen hand rummaged for a few seconds before drawing out and exquisite silver necklace. No less impressive for its archaic style, it was adorned with many opals and had a strange gleam under the defunct room's gloomy atmosphere. Somehow though, it gave off the impression of contained malice, content only for so long to sit in the dark without performing evil deeds. Though how a necklace could perform deeds of any kind, or express a preference, Harry had no idea. He'd certainly ask the Professors after all this was over, or maybe Valeria.

 _"Petrificus Totalus!"_

Whispered incantation finished, the Full-Body Bind lashed out of his wand and towards the target. Valeria had advised to strike first and let the Professors ask questions much later in any sort of dangerous situations, and Ron had readily agreed with her. It was all about the element of surprise, his best mate had said. Unfortunately, his attack was reflected back into him by an until then invisible Shield Charm.

 _"Stupefy! Expelliarmus!"_

His target's total surprise allowed him to fire off a couple more disabling spells as they danced around the room but before long the blur seemed to turn around and maybe aim the half-glimpsed outline of a hand towards him.

 _"Confundo!"_

Harry knew that spell. Lockhart had introduced it in class only a few days ago. So when it crashed into his shield with the force of a freight train, he fought with all his will and magic to keep the shield up. He did not want the evil wizard to mess with his mind and make him believe he needed to report to Professor Snape's office and volunteer to clean cauldrons by hand, or something. Finally, the pressure faded; his shield had held!

 _"Stupefy!"_

 _"Reducto!"_

His stunner crashed onto his opponent's shield and broke it, but spent itself in the process. He had to dodge the silvery-blue beam of his target's return fire and the spell he didn't recognize struck the wall... and promptly blew a Harry-sized hole all the way through three feet of stone! Merlin! By the time he'd finished rolling frantically, someone large and unseen struck his still-raised shield on their way out the door. Maybe they'd thought their first attack had broken it, or they didn't care what happened as long as they escaped. In any case, the Shield Charm hurled them twenty feet away and into the nearest wall. It took only seconds for Harry to jump to his feet and ready his wand for more Stunners but by then the invisible figure was gone. They'd left behind two things though; the small trunk they'd been searching through... and the opal necklace with the ominous aura. They must have dropped it during their hasty retreat.

Wondering how could a necklace of all things be connected to the attacks, Harry lifted it up gingerly in his off-hand, wrapped it in the Cloak to turn it invisible too, and went in search for a Professor.


	40. Secrets

**Urazz: Harry surprised him, and the bad guy ran to escape any other people that might be coming. Harry is known to hang out with up to six people, not all of which are as easygoing as he. But yes, Harry is the best in thinking on his feet and has very sharp reflexes. Once he gets a bit better spell repertoire...**

 **GuardianXAngel: Care of Magical Creatures and Ancient Runes as Valeria demanded of Ron, plus Divination. (Ron took that too)**

 **StevenG: Yep, that Opal Necklace. In canon, Harry first sees it in Book 2. As for why it's used, it has a few advantages - and can kill people with a solid enough touch. Someone invisible with that in hand could merely walk through a corridor and kill everyone he meets. As for the snakes, nonmagical ones have limited intelligence. In fact, they shouldn't be able to talk back at all, but the magic infused into Parseltongue temporarily allows them to.**

 **Guest: That's why Valeria did it. She's not above manipulating people for their own good. Unlike Dumbledore though, it actually IS for their own good. Usually.**

 **ro781727: No necklace Horcux; that was the Diary. The petrification attacks only started after Valeria lost it. For the electives, it always struck me as absurd that any two classes of a given year would have been put at the same time. Or maybe the teachers did not want some people to take some subjects together, for some reason. Purebloods would have no problems exploitong and stealing from muggles. After all, if you have no issues using them as ingredients for dark rituals or your own amusement...**

 **Phillip: What's more scary? If Valeria uses it for more than studies, or if she uses it only for studies? You're correct about the Deathly Hallows. They won't come up for a long time yet, but our heroes already know Harry's cloak is exceptional. Any pureblood other than Ron would immediately find it odd that it lasted at least thirteen years. And with Valeria being curious enough to cast a bunch of detection spells on it and get nothing -something that wouldn't happen on a normal cloak - the kids know it's unusual. It can't be summoned, banished, tracked, or otherwise spelled and only very strong magic reveals those hidden beneath.**

 **...**

"This is indeed a powerful cursed item." Snape said after casting several examination spells on the opal necklace. "The enchantment upon it is similar to the Killing Curse-" Whispers filled the Staff Room. All faculty members present as well as Harry shuddered, though Harry was almost certain Lockhart's reaction had only been for show. "-in that more than the lightest, briefest contact with it severs the Essence of Self from the body, resulting in death without any physical symptoms." The Potions Master paused briefly and in the silence that followed Harry wondered -not for the first time- why was it up to Snape to examine the cursed necklace and not someone else like Professor Flitwick... or professionals from the Ministry, such as Aurors. A moment later he dismissed his suspicions as a side-effect of spending too much time with his Slytherin friends. Besides, if he had to remain here and probably get a scolding for running after the culprit on his own, he might as well listen to what the Professors discovered.

"...brief and very light contact still results in extensive damage." Snape was saying now in a clinical tone, as if reading from some boring textbook and not describing something horrible. "The link between the body and the Essence of Self is still disrupted, resulting briefly in extreme pain followed by a catatonic state that cannot be lifted without the disruption being reversed. Untreated victims get progressively worse until death occurs." The greasy-haired, black-robed Head of Slytherin turned and looked first at Professor McGonagal, then the rest of the room. "This is, without doubt, what was used in half the attacks so far... unless there are more items with such properties in the Heir's hands."

"Thank you Severus." The Deputy Headmistress said with feeling. "At least now we can be sure no students will be attacked in such a manner again. Why didn't the school's protective enchantmens warn us though?"

"If I may, Minerva?" Diminituve Professor Flitwick asked, then continued when McGonagal nodded. "Magic is more readily detectable as it is being cast - that is when area enchantments can find it, and in some situations relay their findings over great distances. Existing magic on the other hand requires secrecy sensors or detection spells that work within a few feet. Being a lasting enchantment, the curse on the necklace wouldn't register unless someone was actively looking for it."

"Thank you Filius." Professor McGonagal said, then turned towards Harry himself. The second-year Gryffindor gulped as every Professor in the entire school copied McGonagal's last action. "And thank you too, Mister Potter. Had you not confronted an obviously older, more capable student and taken this from them when you stumbled into their suspicious behaviour, who knows what might have happened. Fifty points for your bravery." He and his friends had decided not to tell about the snake spy network they'd set up until after the Heir had been captured. While not illegal, Harry had experienced first-hand the stigma being a Parselmouth carried and had no desire to do so again by revealing he'd been actively using that ability without any positive results to show for it. Maybe after they'd foiled the Heir with it, it would redeem him in the student body's eyes.

"Are you sure we should be rewarding Mister Potter for his bumbling heroics?" Snape asked snidely. "While one of the Heir's weapons has been removed from play, we lost a great opportunity to apprehend him and still have no idea who he is or what else he's using against the students. And after Potter's encounter with him, the Heir will certainly be more cautious. In fact, Potter's hasty actions might have done more harm than good."

"Severus!" Exclaimed Professor McGonagal incredulously, and Harry instantly felt gratitude towards his Head of House for her unwavering support. "You well know it takes long minutes to get from one side of the castle to the other. Would you have the Heir disappear into the school population after having armed himself with his favored weapon, while Mister Potter was searching for us? If nothing else, he certainly averted the next attack!" Snape scowled as Professor McGonagal shot down his nasty comments. Why did the Head of Slytherin hate him so much? "And how could have Mister Potter guessed the Heir had more than this necklace at his disposal? We don't know what else he had, for Merlin's sake!"

"He's got a Basilisk, ma'am." Harry blurted before he could stop himself. Either his warming feelings towards Professor McGonagal or his desire to help had him act faster than his conscious mind could tell him not to. The uproar that followed drowned out everything else for a good minute.

"Why do you say that, lad?" The aging, maimed Professor Kettleburn said. Before Harry could answer though, Snape had connected two and two.

"Of course! Potter's a Parselmouth!" He stared accusingly down at him, beady black eyes gleaming from behind a curtain of greasy black hair. "How often have you heard the monster talking, Potter, and what did it say? Did you hear anyone else talking to it? And why didn't you tell us before?"

"Before every attack that resulted in petrification, sir. It only talked about killing and never spoke to anyone else that I heard." He answered, not daring to backtalk. He did have some legitimate complaints, though. "At first, I didn't know what was happening. By the time I did, everyone believed I was the Heir of Slytherin - it took one of my friends and the Minister of Magic to stop it because nobody spoke against those rumors. And after last year when nobody had believed me about the Philosopher's Stone either..."

Snape was furious about his indirect accusations against the Hogwarts staff, Professor McGonagal had a pained expression on her face, and everyone else seemed upset, but neutral. They didn't keep him long after that, mainly because McGonagal didn't want to put him under any more pressure - her words, not his. He fled the Staff Room under Snape's furious stare but with his dignity intact and not a single point deducted.

He'd kiss Valeria and Daphne next time he saw them. If not for their coaching in how to handle the Professors if they caught him checking the snakes, he'd have probably gotten detention till the end of the year.

 **...**

"OW!"

The first thing Valeria did when she, Daphne, and Tracey met with the boys the day after Harry's latest stunt was to slap the Boy-Who-Was-Too-Stupid-To-Keep-Living so hard that her hand hurt. Because she'd cast a Leadweight Charm on her hand before doing so, Harry now lay sprawled on the floor with his glasses askew, his right cheek red, and a growing fear of her displeasure. He might even remember not to let his Shield Charm lapse next time, but that was probably too optimistic.

"What was that for!" Ron asked, standing between Valeria and his best mate, showing a total lack of survival instinct.

"Oh I don't know, Weasley." The temperature dropped twenty degrees in the span of two seconds - if she didn't get a hold on her emotions, her accidental magic might either freeze of burn the entire room. "Maybe it's because Harry risked his life against one culprit when the other might have been around too. Or because he spent his one free shot on a first-year curse instead of something stronger in what could have been a lethal fight. Or because he's walking through the corridors with neither Invisibility Cloak nor a Shield Charm on when both culprits are still out there." She crossed her arms and glared. "Do you want me to go on?"

"Is that why you sent an owl asking us to meet you here?" Harry said, rubbing his reddening cheek. "Because not even Snape greeted me with a slap for finding the necklace. How did you get details before we talked, anyway?"

"I have my ways." She'd asked Lockhart through his 'greatest fan' - not that she could tell that to Harry. "And no, the meeting is because we came up with something else about this mystery."

"Oh great." Ron groaned. "Are we conjuring more snakes?"

"I don't know." She looked at the third Lion in their group. "Neville? Does Dowager Longbottom want us to?"

"No." The timid boy smiled tentatively and all three girls returned it. That Neville had written her a letter after his correspondence with his grandmother about the situation in Hogwarts instead of confiding to Harry and Ron, indicated that he still had serious self-confidence issues. What did he think? That his two Gryffindor mates wouldn't believe him? At least he'd given her an idea on how they could contact any member of their group in Hogwarts within ten minutes without needing to know where they were or be able to enter another House's common room. It was quite obvious in retrospect that the Hogwarts owls could find any student and fly to them in about a minute, and getting to the Owlery would always be faster than a random search of the castle.

"Granma was furious neither Dumbledore nor our Head of House had notified anyone about the Chamber. She'd been a student during the original opening along with Professor McGonagal, see." Neville smiled again, probably about something his Grandmother had said about his Head of House. "She told me that the girl who died back then had been named Myrtle Warren. Found it a bit odd that her ghost would be petrified this time. Then she asked me whether we were sticking our noses into things, like we did last year." The boy gulped now, smile vanishing. "Thought she was going to ground me till my thirties when I told her we were. Only thing she said was 'Good', then cut off the conversation."

A boy with common sense, Neville. Valeria would bet anything neither Ron nor Harry had talked about Voldemort's shade, the Philosopher's Stone, or their other adventures with a responsible adult. The Headmaster and faculty didn't count; the key word was 'responsible'. A couple of things struck her as odd about Neville's conversation with his grandmother, but the most important...

"Neville, how did you speak with your grandma? Telephones don't work in Hogwarts and the students aren't allowed to use the Floo."

"What are tel-lypones?" he asked, totally butchering the obviously unfamiliar word. He didn't wait for an answer though. Instead, he took out a hand mirror from his pocket and grinned. "Magical, two-way mirror. They're expensive, but for an Ancient House they are just another trinket we've hoarded over the centuries. On the plus side, with them I can see and hear Grandma as often as I want. On the minus side, Grandma can see and hear me as often as she wants." His cheeks went a bit red with embarassment. "Hearing about the Chamber opening after what had happened last year, Grandma said she needed a way to check up on me often. Shouted at me for a quarter-hour about what would happen if I lost it. At least it can't be broken; she cast so many unbrekable and protection charms on it I could probably use it to block curses."

"Wow Neville, this is great." She hadn't expected the Wizarding World to be capable of video conferences, though in retrospect she should have. "Know where I can buy one myself?"

"Another time, Val." Daphne interrupted. "We'd better discuss why the ghost of a previous incident's victim would be taken out by the Heir this time."

"It's obvious, isn't it?" Tracey said. "Moaning Myrtle knew something. Probably even the identity of the Heir back in the day, or another critical piece of information."

"But why would this generation's Heir want to take her out?" Harry asked and a suspicion started growing in the back of Valeria's mind. "It's not as if fifty-year-old clues could be used about the new Heir?"

"Why not?" Valeria countered, suspicions taking shape. "Whoever said that the Heir of Slytherin had to be a student? With the way the Heir keeps walking around invisible, they could well be an adult wizard hiding, even living, within Hogwarts grounds and nobody would know. What's one more person among six hundred?"

 **...**

"Search everything! Being invisible can make one overconfident. The Heir could have forgotten some detail we could find."

"Speaking from experience, Potter?" Tracey snarked as the six of them piled into the second-floor girl's bathroom. She'd been the one to point out that the bathroom had become the site of an attack twice; if Myrtle's hauntings focused on it, it must have been where she died. That the Heir had attacked her a second time in the same place could be more than coincidence. A bit tenuous - OK, a lot - but it was the only thing they had.

 _"Specialis Revelio!"_

Valeria's Magic-Revealing Charm didn't give her any new clues, however many times she cast it. There was a lot of magic around, of course; everything was magical in Hogwarts. But the castle's ancient enchantments were beyond her ability to analyze to any useful degree, and far too numerous to check individually. Why, there were half a dozen enchantments on every sink, from self-repair charms and durability spells to waste-vanishing transfiguration.

"I think I found something!" Ron said after nearly half an hour of thorough search, and everyone gathered around the sink he'd been checking. "There's a tiny snake engraved here."

"Could be a decoration." Daphne said doubtfully.

"I don't think so." Valeria focused on the sink and frowned. "The enchantments here are subtly different than the rest of the bathroom. I can't tell how - they're beyond my skill - but they aren't tied to the castle's main enchantments. I think..." She bit her lip and cast the Magic-Revealing Charm again. "I think they're new! No older than 18th century or so." At Tracey's and Ron's snickers, she rolled her eyes. "OK, relatively new. The entire bathroom must have been built back then but because this part of it wasn't tied to the castle's older spells, it feels different."

"Who would alter it like that?" Harry asked. "Can you see a team of builders working here with nobody noticing?"

"You're thinking muggle builders, Harry." Daphne admonished. "Besides, by definition, there must have been a Heir of Slytherin in every single generation over the past a thousand years. What if keeping the Chamber secret had been a group effort?"

"Who cares?" Ron said, brandishing his wand and sending sparks left and right in his excitement. "Harry, try saying something in Parseltongue! If this is the entrance, you might get it to open."

What a moronic suggestion. There was no way anyone could get a password right through random attempts. If the entrance used a password at all and not some esoteric safety mechanism such as a blood-magic seal requiring the Heir's own blood. They would be here until curfew with no...

Valeria's thoughts were interrupted when after only a couple of hisses Harry got the sink to retract into the floor, the gap on both floor and wall to widen and a pipe mouth as wide as they were tall to appear before them.

"Harry, what did you say?" She asked.

"I said 'Open' and it did." He smiled at his accomplishment. "What do we do now?" Neville, too was looking at the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets with trepidation.

"Of all the stupid...!" Valeria couldn't even speak for a moment. The insult to her House alone... "What kind of so-called Heir of Slytherin uses something so simple to guard the entrance to a Founder's legacy? Were they dumber than a lobotomized gerbil? Where was their House pride? The cunning?"

"Val, _you_ might be angry at the Chamber being so easy to find but we're not." Tracey said. "If anything, we can now improve it before we use it for our secret base." She stared at the dirty, slimy, ominously gaping sewer pipe. "After we get the teachers, though. I'm not going down this disgusting thing for all the Galleons in Gringots." Everyone else, Ron included, nodded their assent. They'd had enough adventure over the past couple of years and crawling through the castle's sewers wasn't appealing in the least. That was when Tracey stumbled and slid a foot or two towards the opening.

"What the hell?"

"Dunno Trace. But..." Daphne slid too, but didn't stumble. Valeria looked at the two of them for a moment, before feeling a tug as well... and a slight vibration on her Shield Charm. Her eyes widened.

"Shields now!" She commanded harshly, not knowing whether the boys habitually kept one raised. It was annoying to always keep a tiny part of your attention into remembering to renew the spell every so often, like a mosquito buzzing in your ear all the time. Luckily, Harry had taken her recent admonishments to heart and Neville would try anything that might keep him safe, from Charms to the counterfeir lucky charms sold the past few months.

Ron however stared at them in terror before the unseen force of a Summoning Charm lifted him and pulled him down the pipe.

 **...**

17 ways to murder Weasley... 18 ways to murder Weasley... 19 ways to murder Weasley... SPLAT!

 _"Reducto!"_

 _"Protego!"_

As an entrance a sewer pipe left a lot to be desired, thought Valeria as she cast a second Shield Charm even as her unseen attacker sent a Disintegration Curse at her. Powerful as it was the curse couldn't shatter her original shield, drill through the second one she'd just raised and still have energy left to hurt her. In fact, her second shield held and by the time the enemy saw what happened, Daphne was getting off the pipe, with Harry a close third.

Why, why, why had they not expected the Heir or the other perpetrator to be waiting at the other side for intruders to open the entrance only to be ambushed by him? It made perfect sense! Weasley's sudden disappearrance must have affected her more than she thought it had - it certainly had Harry and Neville. The two boys had charged heedlessly towards the opening, only for both their shields to collide with hers and hurl her down the pipe too.

 _"Reducto!"_

Daphne almost casually rolled away from the silvery-blue jet of magic and returned fire with a stunner towards the hostile magic's origin. Of them all, she was by far the best in utilizing the Featherweight Charm to enhance her dodging. Must be all the dance lessons pureblood girls get before they are even old enough to talk, or something.

 _"Diffindo!"_

 _"Stupefy"_

 _"Incendio!"_

Harry was not pulling his punches this time; the invisible force of his Severing Charm clanged against the far wall but had it hit an unprotected target, it could have loped off a limb. Tracey's and Neville's efforts went wide too, even when the blond Gryffindor swept his jet of flame wildly. Fighting a near-invisible foe in near-darkness was hard... so why not change the environment?

 _"Fumos!"_

Not something she'd used in a duel before, the Smokescreen Charm ought to outline their enemy just enough to negate his invisibility. Unfortunately, said enemy knew that too, and most free-standing spells only lasted as long as the caster did.

 _Avada Kedavra!_

Fear could be a powerful motivator. An entire pile of rubble, slime, rat skeletons and other debris rose into the path of the Killing Curse from the floor, more than she'd ever moved before without wand or incantation. The green flash hit them and the resultant explosion pelted everyone with their fragments. Thorougly unamused by the use of the Unforgivable, Harry, Tracey, Neville, and Daphne retaliated with Severing Charms thrown straight at the outlined figure. They crashed into his shield and broke it, Daphne's even taking two fingers off his off-hand. If one of them could land just one more spell... what the blood Hell was Ron doing? He only looked like he had a broken leg and still had his wand and everything - why wasn't he doing something?

 _"Protego Maxima!"_

Yep, the guy they were fighting was certainly a seventh year or adult wizard with some experience in Defense. Unfortunately for him, there were five of them, only one of him, and he was facing the daughter of a master duelist, the halfblood heiress of a Dark family that had not had an easy childhood, the son of two aurors, a magical prodigy, and the Boy-Who-Lived.

"Accio Cordis!"

"Percutio!"

"Diffindo!"

"Deletrius!"

"Diffindo!"

Neither Daphne's Heart-Ripping Curse nor Tracey's Piercer managed to overcome the powerful shield - when had they even learned to cast those? - and Neville's Severing Charm was entirely deflected. The Eradication Charm however had been created with precisely that purpose in mind; to destroy magical constructs. In a puff of black smoke, the shield simply vanished, their enemy's invisibility flickered, and Harry's Severing Charm bit into their enemy's side.

"A-Avada-"

"Stupefy!"

The evil wizard they'd been fighting tried the Killing Curse not against them but on the one member of their group that had not been fighting back for some reason. Fear pushing him into action, Ron cast a Stunner before the bad guy could finish his own incantation... and the underground room exploded! With a sound like a thunderbolt, an expanding wave of crimson struck down both Ron and Neville, scythed Tracey's feet from under her, and collapsed the freaking ceiling between Ron and their foe. Falling rock and dust pelted everyone and Valeria was very happy to have a Shield Charm still up. When everything settled and her head stopped spinning, the tunnel had been blocked by the cave-in and she and Harry were on the wrong side...


	41. Revelations

**Inoeth: Thank you!**

 **Lance Corporal Avocado: It's still early years for Valeria's presence to have affected the flow of existing events too much. However, there are a couple rather important changes in how it all turned out. You'll even be seeing one of them soon enough. It's in the end of the third book that canon really starts getting off the rails.**

 **ro781727: It's Riddle all right. Lockhart's fate is coming up soon enough. Valeria tends to make her biggest mistakes when she overthinks things, yes, and while well-read, she's only been part of the Wizarding World for two years. There are loads of cultural issues she's not aware of.**

 **Urazz: Not having Valeria try to help or at least meddle would not be believable. Of course, that doesn't mean that her help would make things better, or that she'd be part of every fight. As for advancing the kids too fast, the Severing Charm is in the Standard Book of Spells Grade 1, which Harry bought in his first year, and is also taught in second-year Charms and first-year Herbology. That it happens to be capable of killing isn't something new; the Fire-Making, Levitation and Engorgement Charms can all kill, as can the Knockback Jinx and Tickling Hex if used in certain ways. Unlike Sectumsempra though, it is not infused with Dark magic to make it powerful enough to overcome typical defenses, or prevent the wounds it deals from being healed.**

 **StevenG: Yes, yes it does.**

 **Son of Whitebeard: Not a chat, per se. I'm leaving that for the Muggle Studies class next year.**

 **codys77: I believe it's because it has an original character - many people dislike such stories. Reviewing and favoring can help, though.**

 **Becka3490: Thanks!**

 **Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling. I'm only using it to make a fun and free story. Also, this chapter uses a couple of lines from the original book.**

 **...**

"Please tell me that wasn't Ron's cracked wand blowing up!" Valeria and Harry slowly came to their feet, having narrowly avoided the collapsing mass of rock, soil, and broken masonry. If the booted foot twisting feebly under one of the larger rocks was any indication, their opponent hadn't been so lucky. While she felt absolutely no pity for their would-be murderer meeting such a grisly end, she was still worried about all their friends.

"Umm... I can't do that." Harry said sheepishly, then looked at the tunnel around them. In the dim light provided by their lit wands, the underground space looked dismal, ancient, and too crude to be man-made... except for the massive, round, iron door at the far end. Broken stone, slime, lichen, rat skeletons and other random debris rose at least ankle-high all over the place, and what looked like a really huge snakeskin lay near the iron door. "You reckon this is the Chamber? Where's the Basilisk then?"

"Don't change the subject!" Valeria growled. "Weasley should have gotten a new wand long before this day, the redheaded idiot! Not only was he in danger, what with the Heir around and him practically wandless, but a malfunctioning wand is a major threat. All it would have taken would be for a Flame-Making or Severing Charm to have misfired and someone could have ended up dead! He almost killed all of us with a Stunner, back there!" She grumbled some more about the idiocy of teenage boys then remembered why none of the girls had pressured Ron more on that crucial matter. "Who's the idiot who covered the wand with glamours? Daphne or I would have had words with the Professors if we'd seen him using a broken wand in class even once."

"Err..."

"Figures." Not wishing to argue any more given their situation, the Slytherin witch turned to the rubble blocking the tunnel once more. "Well, Eekins is dead at least. Racist snob - we never did find if he was the one to gas Daphne, Tracey, and me on the Hogwarts Express last year though Trace had always suspected him." Seeing Harry's expression she explained. "A seventh-year Slytherin. One of the worst in our House but always good at hiding it."

"Was he the Heir? If yes, we should get out of here." He looked critically at the cracked ceiling overhead, leaving Valeria to wonder about her friend's stability. Harry had shown no strong reaction to Quirrel's death last year, or to the other near-death experiences he'd had now that she thought about it. "Do you think the ceiling will hold if we try to dig ourselves out of here?"

"Eekins wasn't the Heir, Harry." She finally said, very sure. "As for the other problem, it'd only take a minute to clear the rubble with a combination of Featherlight, Shrinking, and Softening Charms but I don't think the two of us could stop another collapse."

"Right. We could try to find another way out but what about the others?" He stared guiltily from the circular iron door to the pile of rubble. "I don't want to leave them."

"Neville can call his Gran in that mirror of his and then an angry Dowager Longbottom would be storming the castle in only a few minutes." Valeria reassured him. "If he can't do that for some reason, us finding another way out and then telling the Professors becomes a priority."

"Do you think the Heir's around?" Before she could answer, he shook his head then took out a bundle of silvery fabric and pushed it towards her. "Right, silly question. I want you to take the Cloak."

"Harry!"

"Not one word, Val." He stared at her with such determination she knew she'd never change his mind. "You're first on the Heir's list of targets, I'm far better at dodging in a duel, and you are stealthier." He nodded at the magical purse hanging from her belt. "Not to mention you have a better chance of using our little trick than I would."

"OK Harry." She said, draping the Cloak over her and disappearing from sight. "But if you get killed, I'm going to perfect the Dark Art of Necromancy just so I can tell you 'I told you so'."

 **...**

"This is rather unexpected." The brown-haired teenager said as soon as Harry entered the Chamber of Secrets. An ancient, cavernous space with a ceiling so high as to be barely visible in the greenish light provided by several braziers lit with green flames, one side taken up entirely by a statue of an old man rising to titanic proportions, it was just as impressive as it was ominous. Harry didn't care about that, though. He was far more interested in the sixth or seventh year student that had just spoken. Was he the Heir of Slytherin? Why hadn't Harry seen him before? Where was the Basilisk? And who were the two identical girls in Slytherin robes lying unconscious at his feet, just about old enough to be first-years?

"When I commanded that idiot to stand guard over the entrance, I didn't really expect any visitors." The older boy frowned at Harry. "Certainly not someone so young. Oh well, Mister Rookwood had outlived his usefulness anyway. I suppose he's dead, no?"

"Yes." Harry confirmed, not elaborating. Volunteering information was a bad idea. "Are you the Heir of Slytherin?"

"I was, and will be." The boy smirked and however good-looking he might be, it was certainly a nasty expression. Harry's attention was also drawn to how the boy's frame seemed to be translucent on closer inspection, both like and unlike a ghost. "Not just yet, though. But where are my manners?" The boy smiled indulgently down at him and Harry found it both disturbing and patronizing. "My name is Tom Riddle. Who might you be?"

"I am Harry Potter." Harry said, not quite knowing why he answered the question. For a split-second there Riddle had sounded like his very best friend, a person he could trust with everything. But then both his memory and common sense reasserted themselves, and the compulsion faded away. He wondered if he'd ever have recognized that kind of magic without being taught by Lockhart and having three Slytherin girls as friends.

"Are you? Are you really?" Riddle laughed out loud. "Oh, to have the famous Harry Potter here for my rebirth after I heard so much about you from the Carrow twins." He bent low and petted the unconscious girls like one would do a dog. It was rather disturbing. "Imagine that: the so-called saviour of Wizarding Britain was secretly another Parselmouth, one with friends in my old House, one who finds his way into this Chamber despite the guard dog I set to defend it with his life." Seeing Harry's surprise, he laughed again. "Oh, the girls told me about a lot of things. They were eager to, in fact. Especially after I gave them some tidbits of magical knowledge to use against their peers." He patted the Carrow twins in the head fondly. "Talented, clever, selfish, but still young and easily manipulated. But then, I'd always had a gift for charming those I needed. They will be the first of my new circle of... friends once this ritual is done. With that useless idiot making much of a contribution, and the rest spread between two young but strong witches they need not be sacrifices for my rebirth. They will even be improved by the experience, always having an ear to listen to their troubles even as they become my eyes into the world."

"Who are you?" Harry asked, playing for time and trying to have Riddle share some more of his plans. He'd no idea how to beat a ghost, especially one who claimed he'd soon be reborn. And the Basilisk? He could see no giant snake around. "Who are you, really?"

"Oh no, Harry Potter. It's now your turn." Riddle stared at him hungrily now. "How can it be that a mere infant defeated the most powerful wizard the world has ever seen? The more you talk, the more you'll live. I profess myself uncertain as to your true allegiance yet it is irrelevant; I'll abide neither an enemy, nor a potential rival to my power."

"What do you care how Voldemort was destroyed?" Harry asked. The more he thought about it, the less he liked the idea of this Riddle character being reborn. It was becoming clear that he'd somehow influenced the two girls and the boy they'd fought back at the entrance to do his own dirty work. They really didn't need someone able and willing to attack people like that around. "He was after your time." That was probably true, if Riddle had been the one to open the Chamber fifty years ago as only a teenager, and then had somehow died and become a ghost-thing. The war with Voldemort had only been a decade ago, and Voldemort was still alive; Harry had seen him, after all.

"You don't know much, do you?" Mocked Riddle. Then with a gesture toward the Carrow girls, one of their wands rose to his hand and he grasped it firmly. Was it Harry's imagination, or was Riddle's form slowly becoming more solid? Wand in hand, Riddle used it like a pen to write upon thin air with letters of fire.

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE

"My name, Potter. An eternal reminder of my hated muggle father. The one thing my fellow Slytherins held against me... until I murdered my father and his family, and chose a new name for myself." He flicked the wand and the letters rearranged themselves.

I AM LORD VOLDEMORT

"You see Potter, Lord Voldemort is my past, my present, and my future." The ghost laughed again and Harry felt a shiver - and not from the cold air of the chamber. "It was I who opened the Chamber and terrorized the school long ago, who left my memory behind as insurance that my work would never be forgotten, that future generations would have a way to open the Chamber again when needed." He laughed. "It was I who brought an entire nation to its knees, who would have won if, in a freak occurrence of magic, a baby had not managed to stop me. How did you do it, Potter? I wish to know, and you will tell me before you die. One way or another."

"I have no idea why you lost your powers when you attacked me." Harry said, thinking furiously. His mother's protection had helped him in an encounter just like this one only a year ago, but he'd no idea if it would work if Riddle - Voldemort - regained his full powers. It certainly wouldn't if he answered Riddle's question and Riddle found a way around it. So he had to find a way to force the confrontation early, somehow. And he thought he knew a way. "Why don't you ask yourself? I met your shade last year, when he failed to get the Philosopher's stone. You've been left as a mere shadow and vapour, helpless unless you share another's body." Harry forced himself to laugh then, just like Riddle had. "Most powerful wizard in the world? Obviously not - even at the height of your powers during the war, you never dared attack this castle. Dumbledore was here and you feared him - because he was the greatest wizard in the world, and you knew it!"

"My mere memory was enough to remove Dumbledore from Hogwarts!" Riddle roared but Harry could see he was no longer as calm as he'd been. The truth always hurt, as Tracey had once told him. That was why she'd chosen rumours, words, as her weapon. Well, if Riddle couldn't handle the truth...

"You think so, don't you?" He snorted. "Everybody knows Albus Dumbledore is the greatest Headmaster the school has ever seen - the first wizard I ever met told me so. He'll never be far when so many people believe in him!"

There was a flash of red flame near the ceiling of the Chamber, and Fawkes swooped down, throwing a brownish bundle at Harry's feet. It was the Sorting Hat! While he picked it up Dumbledore's Phoenix flew in circles, his beautiful, unearthly song making Harry's heart soar. Tom Riddle on the other hand laughed again.

"So that's what Dumbledore sends to his Champion, a bird and an old hat." He smirked nastily. "Why does he not come here himself, I wonder? A Phoenix could certainly have brought him here, now that the Chamber has been found by one of the idiots that worship him."

Harry didn't pay any attention to Riddle's taunts. Not only would they be meant to disturb him, make him less effective in a fight, but also he remembered how Voldemort had tried to use lies to manipulate him in their last encounter.

"Oh well. I guess we'll never know." Riddle said and turned towards the massive statue that took up one side of the Chamber. Harry didn't need any special invitation; he raised his wand and cast.

"Stupefy!"

As his spell passed through Riddle harmlessly, Voldemort's teenage self laughed.

"Striking at me from behind, Potter? A bit late for showing pragmatism, isn't it?" And with that he stared up to the statue and spoke... but not in any language anyone else would have understood.

 _"Talk to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four."_

The massive statue's mouth opened and a snake nearly as wide as Harry was tall came out. The Basilisk! Harry immediately turned away and moved towards one of the stone pillars holding up the roof. That was one foe he really didn't want to have a staredown with. Luckily, he didn't have to. From behind another pillar, a rooster appeared. The bird looked a bit dishevelled, its feathers ruffled as if it had been carried inside a bag... or a purse. It took a few stumbling steps forward then stood. And crowed.

"NO!" Shouted Riddle, as if his denials could stop the rooster from doing what both came naturally and was being forced by a compulsion spell. The rooster crowed again and again and Harry waited to see the Basilisk falling over dead, or at least thrashing in terrible pain. But nothing of the sort happened. The Basilisk just stared at his supposed bane, and the bird died.

"You had me worried there for a moment, Potter." Riddle said grudgingly. "A cunning plan to pretend ignorance when you'd brought a potential threat to my pet with you. Unfortunately for you, the silencing enchantment that ensures the Basilisk can only hear the true Heir of Slytherin and no other Parselmouth seems to protect it from the rooster's cry too. And why not? Silencing spells are taught to all students - even if a wizard of Slytherin's power had somehow forgotten to employ them to protect his legacy, his Heirs over the ages would have remembered."

Seeing the Basilisk turn back towards him, Harry gulped and kept his eyes shut as he retreated. Riddle's laughter followed him all over the Chamber.

 **...**

Consciousness returned slowly, numbness still slowing her limbs and her head still pounding. For a moment Valeria wondered if she had been blinded, then she realized what the weight pressing down on her shoulders had to be. Fumbling for a few moments, she struggled to lift the thick dragonhide helm from her shoulders; with its enchantments broken, it was really heavy. Luckily, she was still under Harry's Cloak and thus invisible and hidden from several methods of detection. The plan had worked well enough in the beginning. She'd been ready to deploy the rooster as soon as the Basilisk appeared, then help Harry by cursing Riddle in the back. Naturally, it had all gone to Hell in a handbasket when the Basilisk had failed to keel over and she'd been caught in his stare to boot when she had - perhaps foolishly - expected it to die outright.

Checking the destroyed helm, she winced at how the outer layer of magically-resistant, fire-immune dragonhide had been reduced to a few patches of incinerated skin flaking off at her touch. The second layer had only fared marginally better, a blackened and brittle material all that remained. Only the inner layer was somewhat intact, stiff and cracked but still whole. Of the jinx-repelling glue and varnish that had held the three together and the enchantments laid upon and around them, nothing had been left. Multiple layers of protection taking the hit before she did, and she'd still been knocked out for a time. Luckily, the Cloak of Invisibility didn't appear to have been damaged at all, despite having been the first barrier between her and the Basilisk's stare. If it had been destroyed, Harry would have killed her. Speaking of Harry...

"You're dead, Potter." Riddle's voice was saying. "Even Dumbledore's bird knows it. You know what it's doing, Potter? It's crying!"

Valeria hurried around the stone columns to see for herself whether there was any truth in Riddle's boasts, and momentarily stood to gape at the Basilisk's corpse and the damage the fight had dealt to the Chamber's walls and Slytherin's statue. Harry had managed to kill that thing?! How?! It was one of the most dangerous beasts in the world, for Merlin's sake! As magically resistant as a dragon and with even deadlier natural magic, not to mention this specimen must be sixty feet long if it was an inch - and Harry was twelve!

"Get away from him you stupid bird, get away!" Oh right, Phoenix. Riddle must have been pants in Care for Magical Creatures if he'd forgotten about the amazing healing properties of Phoenix tears until too late. Then again, Valeria herself had read about the properties of Basilisk venom and their single cure only a few days ago - Riddle had had fifty years to forget things. Speaking of Riddle...

 _"Homenum Revelio"_

Her whispered incantation made Harry glow brightly in her eyes, and Fawkes just as much. Riddle's shade had a far lesser, muted glow that seemed somehow incomplete, one that reached both towards the unconscious Carrow twins as well as... ah, there it was. The diary. Except it wasn't a Diary at all, was it? The darker aspects of Soul-Magic and Life Alchemy dealt with Essence Transference, one of the things she'd read about in her quest to understand Quirrel's possession by Voldemort last year. Valeria wondered just how Riddle had managed to put some of his Essence of Self into an object rather than a body and with his original self still alive, but that wasn't important right now.

Under the cover of the Cloak, she managed to get hold of the diary without Riddle's shade noticing. He was too busy throwing hexes at Fawkes for the phoenix's healing of Harry, though what would that accomplish Valeria had no idea. No malign magic or damage would remain on a phoenix with their healing tears, and death was a temporary inconvenience thanks to their rebirth through their own fire. When she saw Fawkes flying left and right over the Chamber and getting closer to her position she stepped back, moving towards the Basilisk. She didn't want one of Riddle's spells hitting her by accident and she wanted a sure way to destroy the Diary close at hand. Trying to make a fire hot enough and magically powerful enough to finish the job didn't seem like a good idea.

Harry got to his feet after picking up his wand and an awesome-looking, ruby-encrusted sword. Was it what he'd used to kill the Basilisk? No wonder he'd been bitten; crazily brave Gryffindor pain in her backside. Wait, Fawkes was slowly getting closer to her location again. Was he trying to find the Diary? Before she could decide whether she should throw it to the phoenix, Riddle hit him with a strong Banishing charm and hurled him against a wall. Even as Fawkes' broken wing healed before their eyes, Riddle ripped a wagon-sized mass of stone off the wall above and buried the Phoenix under it. Clever; while Fawkes might be immortal and constantly regenerating, being buried would just as constantly crush him to death.

"Good riddance!" Riddle spat angrily. "Well, Potter. It would seem it's down to us now. I actually prefer it like this, you know. Proving once and for all which of the two of us is the best."

"You talk too much." Was all Harry said, unknowingly agreeing with Valeria's own words of many months before, and the duel was on.

It was brief and brutal. Not only Riddle was far older and thus more magically developed, but Harry's attacks passed harmlessly through him as he wasn't physically present just yet. Harry still managed to hold his own dodging and weaving faster than Valeria would ever have managed, and even used his sword to bat aside several curses, almost nailing Riddle with one of his own Killing Curses. At that narrow brush with death or at least discorporation - Valeria suspected Soul Magic would work on Riddle's current form and the Killing Curse was just that - the shade sent a blasting curse at Harry's feet instead of going for a direct hit. The blast still threw the twelve-year-old boy thirty feet back and knocked both sword and wand off his hands. Even if it hadn't, Harry was unconscious again and in no condition to fight. On the other hand, Valeria had just managed to get next to the Basilisk's corpse undetected.

"Hey Tom, guess what?" She taunted. "I have a Diary and a Basilisk fang."

 **...**

When Harry opened his eyes, he saw a short blonde girl in Slytherin robes standing over him. He was still too groggy to notice any more details though, unless...

"Hey Val, fancy seeing you again." He smiled. "Have you seen my glasses?"

"Here, you bloody idiot!" She said and gave them to him. "I just cleaned and repaired them. You have to do something about them though; they're a huge weakness. If Riddle had thought to summon them first and then hit you with a curse..."

"Yeah..." He winced as he came to his feet with her help. His body ached all over after two bloody duels. "What happened? Why didn't you help earlier?"

"The Basilisk got me." She sad sheepishly, then giggled at his terrified expression. "Don't worry, a protective item reduced the effect to a few minutes' of unconsciousness. I got there soon enough to help... though my efforts might have made things worse." He handed over to him a black, leather-bound book with blank pages and a hole all the way through it. What looked like ink had poured out of it - and on her, now that he noticed. "Fawkes was looking for this. It was what had anchored Riddle here, I think. Had I not already retrieved it and Fawkes taken it to you earlier... well, you wouldn't have been knocked out a second time."

"Don't worry, Val. Nobody's perfect - not even you." She sent him a guilty look or two but he would have none of it. "But next time we make a backup plan for dealing with a threat, OK? The rooster was a total bust."

They both laughed at their narrow survival, though Valeria still looked guilty - probably at not having helped more.

"What are we going to do now?" He asked, trying to take her mind off what had happened. "There's no way I'm climbing up a sewer pipe that long and that dirty."

"First, we need to be sure the Diary is gone. Then we free Fawkes from under that rock, wake up the Carrow twins, get our friends, and ride back to the castle on a phoenix."

Valeria made the hottest fire she knew how, throwing it on the remains of the cursed book until the rocks around it melted into a red-hot puddle. Harry could have sworn he saw something moving in it, a face, a foot, something. But then it was over and not a trace of the cursed book had been left. In the meantime, he'd been trying his levitation charm on the mass pinning down Fawkes until a very tiny, very ugly phoenix chick was revealed. So much for riding out on a phoenix. The Carrow sisters recovered not much after that and were very grateful to him. He'd blushed fiercely when the two girls had kissed him on either cheek at the same time, and Valeria had laughed. Strangely, the girls wouldn't look her in the eye or even speak to her. Must be a Slytherin thing. By the time they went back through the tunnel, their friends had patched themselves up, Ron had gone through a thoroughly mortifying scolding by Daphne, Tracey, and even Neville, and a very long pipe coated with the dirt of centuries waited for them.

The most difficult task of the past few weeks was convincing five girls to climb through it one more time.


	42. Year Two End

**Philip: Sorry to disappoint you on the former. On the latter, the Basilisk was enchanted to 'only listen to the Heir of Slytherin'. That might simply mean that no other Parselmouth could control it, but if you can block one magical sound why not others? However, Riddle could not be certain that was that case and could not test it with normal sounds; snakes don't have ears to begin with. So better safe than sorry.**

 **lightning king: just read on :)**

 **StevenG: maybe I was too honest? An anti-Hermione isn't the same as Hermione. I did put Hermione's name in the summary though, so a search by her name would still bring the story up.**

 **Eliana34: Hermione did less dark things in the original, certainly. But better? I'm not so sure. Harry has more friends here, Ron is pushed into bettering himself, and Neville is becoming more confident. Daphne and Tracey are coming out of the shadows and are turning away from blood fanaticism. What I'm trying to show is how ambition is a driving force to success, and ruthlessness doesn't necessarily make you evil. It still easily can, though.**

 **Guest: True. Valeria is not a charitable or optimistic person though, so she's just as likely to see the worst in others as she is to see the best. Until her friends rein her in, anyway.**

 **wtf: She's supposed to be the smartest witch of her age, and fairly ambitious - it's in the title. She's certainly not any more _capable_ than Hermione, who brewed a NEWT-level potion successfully on her first attempt without preparation, and can do magic one or more years above her own. But due to circumstances and ambition, she tries such things more _often._ As for self-insert, I'm nowhere near smart enough to be her, as well as being taller, more athletic, and not a blonde. Oh, and a decade or two older.**

 **Urazz/ro781727: Valeria had her own reasons for being there. Hints of them are in this chapter and in chapter 18. If you find them, don't spoilt it; contact via PM.**

 **PeliusAnar: Oh, a lot of things have changed. Unfortunately, I had to wait until the end of book 2 to introduce the first big change openly. I hope you guys and gals like it.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, JK Rowling does. If I did, Harry would have been sharing stuff with his friends and not be nearly as secretive as Dumbledore. Of course, that may not have been the best for him, or the story.**

 **...**

"...and then Malfoy Senior stares down at me and says 'Why don't you prove it!'" Harry had both eyebrows raised while keeping his face expressionless and making his voice sound older, sharper and more haughty. It wasn't a bad imitation of Lord Malfoy so the six friends laughed. "At which point I reply that I don't have to; a public announcement in Diagon Alley under a Vow by the Boy-Who-Lived would certainly be believed. And if he wants to sue for slander, well, he'd have to show how I managed to get out from under said Vow... not to mention prove how the memories of my encounter with his own elf were falsified."

"Brilliant, mate." Ron said, and everyone laughed again - except for Valeria. She tried to give the redhead a mild scowl, but couldn't keep it for long. She had known the Weasleys were poor, but not that they'd been too poor to get him a replacement wand. Harry sharing that little tidbit had met with some serious disbelief initially - wizards could make money in so many ways! But then she'd felt bad for not being more considerate of Ron's situation. Bad enough that she had said nothing to the others about how the tunnel collapse that almost killed them all had really happened.

"So, Harry." Daphne asked with an eager gleam in her eyes. "What did you get from Malfoy to keep your mouth shut about him giving the Dark Lord's diary to a Hogwarts student?"

"Oh, you'll like this." Harry said, just as eagerly. "No longer meddling with the Board of Governors was part of it. Sure, he got voted out by the rest of the Board for trying to send Dumbledore away and making things worse, but we all know he'd interfere indirectly still. And I freed Dobby, too."

"You mean Narcissa Malfoy will have to actually do housework now?" Tracey asked snidely. "Oh how the mighty have fallen." And then she giggled.

"The Malfoys have more than one house elf, I'm sure." Valeria said. She didn't know whether Dobby's freedom was a good or a bad thing, what with the elf having a thoroughly distorted notion of how to save one's life. Still he'd come through for them, finally finding an opportunity to talk to himself about how Malfoy had been involved... and letting the enchanted quill and parchment they'd given him copy everything to the duplicate Harry held. The one thing Dobby hadn't known was which student his master had sent the Diary to... for which Valeria was still thanking the fates for. "But it was well done anyway, Harry. Congratulations on your first Slytherin-style negotiation."

The six of them stayed up till curfew discussing recent events and celebrating another encounter with Voldemort they managed to survive. Harry shared with them all of what Dumbledore told him. More cheers came when they found out about the fifty points they'd each earned for their role in stopping the attacks, though Tracey whispered something that sounded suspiciously like 'blatant favoritism' when Harry admitted to getting a further two hundred points for slaying the Basilisk and dueling Riddle. Valeria was not nearly as upset as her brunette friend for Gryffindor winning the House Cup for the year; Harry had more than earned it doing something she herself would have never even attempted. Then again, there was a reason the boy was a Gryffindor.

 **...**

"Gilderoy? Are you finished?" Lockhart's room in the Hog's Head had undergone a few changes. Gone were the animated pictures of himself, the fraudulent accounts of past adventures he'd written. Now every available surface was taken up by hundreds upon hundreds of small vials full of a silvery substance that was neither liquid nor gas, and all magic. Each one was meticulously labelled in Lockhart's own hand, the fruits of over a week of constant wandwork. The Defense Professor was sweaty, pale, his hair faded into a dull yellow far from their usual shiny blond, his robes filthy and torn in several places. His eyes were too large and held the feverish gleam of the truly fanatic - or the hopelessly mad.

"I'm OK. I'm OK. I'm OK... I think. Yes, yes, yes, everything's ready, dear." Served him right, the fraudulent, mind-raping bastard. He'd tried to stun her during their last meeting - an enormous blunder on his part. Had he tried for a more powerful spell to begin with, such as obliviation, he might have even succeeded. But he hadn't, and with Aberforth Dumbledore keeping an eye out for any indirect magic or traps lying in wait, she had had no problems. Lockhard had ended up stunned instead, and Aberforth had graciously provided a room for his... re-education. Considering the old wizard had no problem playing host to anything from hags to dragon dealers, Valeria did not overly worry about the DLME getting wind of this.

"Are you sure Gilderoy? No clue must be left!" Under ten times the standard dose of Unctuous Unction and her improving attempts at a Confundus Charm, the fraud couldn't help but believe anything she said and do all she asked of him. It was as close to the Imperius one could get with potions, with its main drawback the frequent requirement for Bezoars lest Lockhart suffer a poisonous overdose. Luckily, Aberforth had a lot of goats, and was not afraid to use them... as certain photos he'd found in Lockhart's possession could attest.

"Yes, yes, yes, all memories of my casting Mind Magic have been removed except for the memory extraction charm. All my lessons in Hogwarts for my last four years were too." The mentally addled former Professor cackled. "The Ministry and Dumbledore will never find any evidence I ever used it. They won't even know I ever learned it - not from me." He looked at her pleadingly, like a lost puppy. "You'll take it and hide it, won't you? Keep it all secure until any attention or investigation blows over, right?"

Oh, she certainly would. Hundreds of hours of memories of lessons and spellcasting were something some people would kill for. While she wouldn't go that far, she felt that damaging Lockhart's ability to mind-rape anyone else for a long time was a good thing. Without skill in Occlumency or access to the extracted memories to reintegrate them, it would take him time and effort to relearn it all... and she'd leave him with strong incentives not to even try. Leaving him a free man and with a decent source of income was better than he deserved but however much he hated him she was not quite ready to either destroy his mind entirely or murder him for what he'd done and attempted to do.

Now all that was left was to get her hands on a Pensieve, and her and her friends' free time could be turned into tutoring on many subjects of higher years.

 **...**

 _WHO IS THE DARK WANKER?_

 _In an unexpected encounter not seven days ago, this reporter found themselves in the unenviable position of being forced to interview a highly disturbed individual and truthfully report on it on their own resources. We would request of you, dear readers, not to judge us too harshly on our words for we have been magically bound to report the truth, however horrible, unflattering, or unbelievable it may seem to you. Our interviewee even expressed the shocking opinion that all who work for news services should take up such a binding so the public can be certain what news they receive is the truth - however much it may offend our readers' delicate sensibilities or our own personal freedom. But as I said, the intervewee was highly disturbed and should you read beyond this point you will see why._

 _R: Can you state, for the record, who you are? Our readers would like to know at least that much._

 _TMR: Certainly! I was born on December the 31st, 1926, to Merope Gaunt and a worthless muggle scum. Despite being the last of the Gaunts, one of the most ancient pureblood families in Britain with direct descent from Slytherin himself, my mother was a near-squib whose only great talent lay in Potions. For unknown reasons - perhaps being considered an undesirable by other purebloods - Mother chose to snag a wealthy and good-looking Muggle with a powerful love potion rather than do the decent thing and try for another wizard. Unable or perhaps unwilling to keep brewing the potion in the latter stages of pregnancy, Mother was abandoned by the Muggle animal in her helpless state. She died in childbirth, cursing me with that animal's own name so that I would never forget - at least that is my belief._

 _R: I could not help but notice that you've avoided giving a name so far._

 _TMR: Yes. That animal shall not be named in my presence if you value your continued existence. It will be later, when it becomes relevant._

 _R: Very well. Why don't you share a bit more of your life? Our readers will love a good story._

 _TMR: Unfortunately, it was anything but good. I grew up in a muggle orphanage in a time between two great wars where fear and intolerance were at their highest. I was bullied by the animal children, and every animal family that attempted to adopt me for their own perverted reasons. Possibly because of my early bouts of accidental magic, possibly due to the superior intelligence all wizards possess in comparison. I was forced to strike back, learn to control my magic early to defend myself. It worked, for a time. Then, at age eleven, one of my future Hogwarts Professors visited. Failing to understand or care about my horrible living conditions, he intimidated me into allowing the bullying to continue with a show of his own power even as he invited me to attend Hogwarts. I vowed then and there that nobody would bully me again - that I would not stop until I became stronger than any other... and learning magic offered that possibility._

 _R: That's horrible! Can you share that Professor's name?_

 _TMR: No. He shall also not be named until it is expedient._

 _R: Very well. Why don't you tell us of your Hogwarts years?_

 _TMR: Hogwarts... became my home. Not from the first moment, you understand. As an apparent muggleborn, I became a target of Pureblood bullies and was largely ignored by my Professors in any other matters beyond academic achievement. I cannot recall just how many times I went to said Professors for help in important matters over my first couple of years, but I was ignored. Why should they care that the apparent muggleborn knew nothing of the Wizarding World and its culture? Why should they care an orphan was trying to find more about his family? I did not become a person to them until my marks put me well ahead of the rest of my year. Then the smiles and preferential treatment begun - except for the Professor that had bullied me back in the orphanage. He never showed me anything better than cold suspicion._

 _R: It... it can't be! Hogwarts is the best magical school in the world!_

 _TMR: Certainly. Just not the most friendly and inviting. In any event, my academic achievements and systematic networking eventually had just about everyone adoring me, except for that one Professor. Getting twelve OWLs helped. A bit of compulsion and mind-altering potions helped more. When I'd finally managed to conquer the school socially, it was time to do so physically too. That was the first step towards my greatest achievement._

 _R: Your greatest achievement? Do tell._

 _TMR: I discovered my heritage, and descent from Salazar Slytherin. My search even uncovered the so-called Chamber of Secrets within Hogwarts, though I do admit to an unfair advantage in that. A member of my own family - one Corvinus Gaunt if memory serves - had been a student in the early 1700s. He knew of the Chamber and managed to hide it among the new at the time plumbing system, making it both much easier to find by heirs of the family and harder for those lacking our bloodline or gifts._

 _R: You're the Heir of Slytherin?!_

 _TMR: Please don't interrupt, or suffer the Cruciatus. But yes, I am. As I was saying, I discovered my ancestry and the Chamber. That is when I came up with a great idea, a plan to take revenge on all those that had bullied me. The first step was to unleash the Serpent of Slytherin - a Basilisk - on the few idiots of animal descent that went to Hogwarts in my time. This should earn me the further support of the pureblood idiots I'd managed to charm; I was working to further their own goals after all. After a few petrifications and one death, I lay the blame on a halfbreed student and successfully got away with it all, under the noses of the entire Hogwarts staff... except for that one Professor. The pureblood idiots worshipped me then._

 _R: You killed a muggleborn student?!_

 _TRM: Why not? Muggles are obviously animals - they behave like them. They have no business being witches and wizards and bringing that kind of behavior into the Wizarding World. And if that got me the support of several influential and idiotic Purebloods, even better. Letting things settle for a decade or two, I prepared diligently for the second step in my plan. When I was ready, I called my Pureblood minions to my banner, rallied them against the muggleborns and the supposed blood-traitors that supported them, made them into an army. Then I went to war against Wizarding Britain._

 _R: WHAT?!_

 _TMR: It was simple, really. While muggleborns are uncultered animals, purebloods are so inbred over the generations that mental and physical problems begin to appear. My own mother the near-squib and their relatives were a prime example. I was trying to do to Wizarding Britain what I already had done to my own family: my animal father and his entire line I eradicated when I came of age, my inbred pureblood relatives I framed for the crime and left to rot in Azkaban or die resisting arrest. Same thing really; turn the Purebloods against each other and not only do I get rid the Wizarding World of inbred idiots and parochial traditions, but I also take revenge on all those that slighted me. Ultimately, it is Half-Bloods that are superior. I am one, and so was the Professor that intimidated me and showed me true power. The plan was highly successful too - my war ended more pureblood lines, destroyed more pureblood Houses, than any other cause in British history._

 _R: Who...? Who...?_

 _TMR: Oh, I believe you know who. See, I've had some fun with anagrams back in my teenage years. A joke on all the pureblood, inbred wizarding world that very few saw for what it was. TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE. Tom Riddle, as in the animal who fathered me. Marvolo, as in Marvolo Gaunt, my grandfather. A bit of research in Ministry or Hogwarts archives will easily show records of my student years - how many people get twelve OWLs after all? And the Gaunt family being one of the Stupid Twenty-Eight until the last of that line, one Morfin Gaunt, died in Azkaban for supposedly murdering the Riddle family? All in the record, too, Just in case anyone doubts this account, you know? Anyway, back to the fun with anagrams. If you could overcome your inherent supidity and baseless fear for a moment, look at this; I AM LORD VOLDEMORT. See? Perfectly simple anagram of my own name made by a teenager. Too bad you pureblood idiots were too stupid to notice, but it proves my point, no?_

 _R: ... W-what will you d-do to me?_

 _TMR: Nothing much. Just one little Imperius Curse to force you to write an amusingly insulting article about all of this that nobody will believe, print it and distribute it. That's step three of the plan, after that little setback with the Boy-Who-Lived. The Ministry will start expending resources to cover it all up, annoying a lot of people in the process. The purebloods will believe it a farce, or a heavy handed attempt at manipulation by their political enemies, and expend more resources to find the culprit. My greatest foe will find some of his allies turn against him, if they have not already. And when the time of my return arrives, Wizarding Britain will be so much easier to conquer._

 _R: ...The End._

 **...**

Albus Dumbledore stared at the pamphlet in horror. Contrary to what it claimed, some would believe it, all right. On the surface nothing would change much, business as usual the order of the day for most of their world. But beneath that surface there would be tremors, cracks in the foundations. Not all of them would benefit Tom's return as the pamphlet claimed. But they would throw the subtler part of politics into chaos, and cause such tension in other matters... He had to do some damage control. Maybe he could throw his influence around, salvage a few of the plans that had been derailed by closely held secrets being shared so blatantly, turn Tom's tactics against him. For he had no doubt this pamphlet held Tom's words; no other would know some of the things mentioned.

"What is the meaning of this, Albus?" He winced at Minerva's enraged shout. Not that he could blame her, given some of the secrets revealed. Of course, she had to be one of the few to believe it.

"I supported you for thirty bloody years! Did I ever hear any of this before? No, Albus Bloody Dumbledore can't be bothered to share important secrets with his own people. And don't try to say they are lies; I checked the school records before bringing this to your attention."

"Curious." Severus mused, then touched the pamphlet. "Muggle paper and print, but with a basic protective charm on it so it needs some minor effort to destroy. Given the numbers it appeared in in Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley, those interested in its destruction could not make it go away more than one copy at a time. Not without spells too dangerous for crowded areas. By the time they did so, everyone would have read it,"

"Get to the bloody point, Severus!" Minerva shouted again.

"Given your reaction, I wonder whether suspicion and loss of influence for Albus could be its goal. It is certainly not very hard to connect dots and realize just who 'that one Professor' would be. If so, it would be wise not to come to hasty conclusion, no?"

Albus Dumbledore sighed. However much he was happy with Severus' continued support, some of the accusations in the pamphlet did have the ring of truth. And if Severus ever saw beyond his own discrimination where Harry was concerned, he'd certainly notice certain uncomfortable parallels. As he'd said, it was not very hard to connect the dots.

It was going to be a long day, and an even longer summer...

 **...**

A week or two later, after the Minister's hasty inspection of the Wizarding World's worst prison, one of the innmates leafed through a copy of the Daily Prophet. In one of his less depressed moments, he'd joked to the Minister about wanting to do a crossword. Contrary to his expectations, Fudge had smirked nastily and given him the newspaper along with his wishes for pleasant reading. Now, what could have made that idiot Fudge behave like that to a "dangerous murderer", the innmate wondered.

A few minutes later, angry shouts and derisive cackles could be heard all over the high security wing where several Death Eaters and one Sirius Black were imprisoned.


	43. Summer Fire

**Urazz: Adults suspect that a bunch of schoolchildren could do the equivalent of running a smear campaign against Hitler? Unlikely. Besides, the pamphlets contained a lot of information said children could not possibly access - not even Harry in his discussion with Tom Riddle. Why would Tom reveal so many accurate information about himself, along with very specific misinformation that could possibly damage his own return? And yes, things are beginning to change.**

 **NatNicole: Well, it was something I'd never seen in another fanfic story so I put it in. Trying for original ideas in a fandom so developed and active is hard.**

 **DaughterofTerpsichore: Neither can I. Unfortunately, by the time a year is being written, I'm already thinking about plot elements several years down the line.**

 **Codee21: Look at the title of that pamphlet. Who do we know that uses said title, who would really want to stop the Dark Wanker's plots, expose his secrets and totally discredit him so he's no longer a danger? Not everything printed has to be the truth, after all, only a plausible alternative.**

 **ro781727: The Death Eaters of Riddle's generation would know. Malfoy Senior's generation and later certainly wouldn't - with maybe one or two exceptions. Lucius in canon didn't know what the Diary was, after all. Riddle did much to conceal his past and reinvent himself for many reasons, not the least of which to ensure his Horcruxes remained a secret. Even among those in the know, presenting some things in a new light (however false) might shake their loyalties. But far more important than the death eaters themselves would be the indirect supporters and political blocs preventing the Wizengamot and the Ministry from acting against him.**

 **Disclaimer: Harry Potter is owned by JK Rowling. If it was owned by me, Harry would have probably done something unusual and expensive to fix on the Dursleys' property one of the many times they left him on his own.**

 **...**

Harry was brooding. He often did, as his friends had pointed out. Not Ron or Neville; like him the two boys became awkward when feelings or personality were being discussed, or ignored such things altogether. Not Valeria either. Frankly, the Slytherin girl's singleminded pursuit of magical knowledge and power to the exclusion of most anything else scared him. Daphne and Tracey though? Those had cornered him one day and flat-out told him that wallowing in his own misery and keeping his problems to himself was conduct unbecoming the heir of House Potter and totally not how one treated one's friends, however much a pensive frown looked cute on him.

What was he to do though? That had been back in Hogwarts; it was Summer now. He was not about to throw his Dursley problems on somebody else's lap, especially people that couldn't help him. The potion Valeria had given him last year had been a lifesaver - literally. He hadn't been sure he'd have survived being locked up, punished, and starved as the Dursleys would certainly have done if not influenced to be more friendly, let alone being able to study and do his homework. But this Summer, things had taken a turn for the worst. Aunt Marge had come to visit and in only a few days, the Dursleys' behaviour had relapsed with a vengeance. While usually struggling with themselves to reconcile Aunt Marge's demands and memories of their previous character with what they were doing under the potion's influence, there had been the occasional outburst where seemingly a month's worth of abuse had been delivered in only a few hours, with neither Uncle Vernon nor Aunt Petunia remembering anything the next day.

The last and worst outburst had been only two days ago. Uncle Vernon had snapped and beaten him badly, with Harry barely able to crawl back into the safety of his room sporting what was definitely a broken wrist, a mild concussion, what felt like bruised ribs, and far too many scrapes and blackening bruises. Since then, all three of the Dursleys had been seemingly incapable of noticing him, even entering his room a few times and not reacting at all to his presence, not even when Harry had shouted profanities at them. Aunt Marge was pleased with his "punishment" and heartily approved Uncle Vernon's and Aunt Petunia's willingness to let him suffer alone, but Harry knew better. There was something wrong with the Durselys - magically, not physically. Some sort of side-effect from the potion he'd been giving them? No, he trusted Valeria not to make such a mistake with magic. Some sort of attack? He didn't believe that either; if for over a decade he'd lived in this house without dark wizards coming to attack him even once, then he was probably safe. So, then, what was wrong?

He heard a tap on the window. Hedwig had only left a few minutes ago - she couldn't have returned so soon. Maybe another owl? Not many people would be knocking on a first-floor window from the outside. Grunting and falling back on his Quidditch training and the multiple life-threatening adventures he'd had in order to function despite the pain, he came to his feet with some difficulty and turned towards the window. He even held his wand at the ready, though he didn't know how much help it would be. Restrictions to underage sorcery aside, his wrist was still broken and had never practiced casting with his off-hand. In retrospect, that seemed like a huge mistake on his part.

"Open up, Harry! It's us!" A voice came faintly through the closed window. He didn't react as he still couldn't see anyone. A few moments later there was a faint click, the window opened on its own accord... and an unnatural blur glided through. Three more blurs got inside before the turn of events could register through his shock, and then three girls and one boy faded into full visibility, their mediocre concealment charms they'd hidden under breaking as one. Neville, Valeria, and Daphne beamed at him, brooms still at hand. Tracey let her own broom fall down, then collapsed on his bed.

"I'm never listening to you again, Cambell. Never, you hear?" She wiped several beads of sweat from her face and groaned. "Four concealment charms cast back in Diagon Alley and then held for the twenty minutes it took us to get here on our brooms? What the hell were you thinking?" She groaned again. "Forget that - what the hell was *I* thinking?"

"I was thinking that you're the best of us with concealing magic and that the situation was rather urgent." She looked around, blue eyes nearly glowing in the dark room. "And that I had to hold both Presence-Revealing and Magic-Revealing Charms for that same time."

"You OK, Harry?" Neville asked, taking a tentative step forward.

"Of course not!" Daphne spat angrily and retrieved several vials from her extended purse. "Being a duelist, Father has several potions available at all times. Basic healing, numbing, bone-mending; drink them all, Harry. We can't afford you not being in shape right now. As for your so-called family..." Her scowl became murderous and Harry took a hasty step back. "They're only alive because of the Trace and because Valeria insists murder has a very real impact on one's soul. Where are they now?"

"They're eating out today. Aunt Marge insisted some air would do both Ripper and Dudley a great deal of good." He answered automatically, not yet having fully processed the presence of all his friends, except for Ron who was still in Egypt with the rest of his family. "Guys how... why..."

"No time for that, Potter." Daphne sniffed. "We're on a tight schedule, for your own good. When our esteemed Headmaster replied to my letter early this morning and only said you were quite safe and that I should not worry, I contacted everyone else and had this planned within a few hours. Now, where are your things?"

"My trunk is locked in..." he swallowed nervously "...in the cupboard under the stairs. Got everything there, except for a book or two and Hedwig's cage." He could feel the potions working, his pain numbed away even as strength slowly returned to his battered frame. "But..."

"Here." Neville said, handing over a copy of the Daily Prophet from only a few days ago. "Less questions that way." Harry nodded his thanks, and took the newspaper from him. Upon seeing what was in the front page, he dropped it to better focus on gaping at his friends. He'd only read the heading, but it was enough.

 **MASS BREAKOUT FROM AZKABAN**

 **...**

"-and then Uncle Vernon just snapped." Harry gulped again, remembering a totally unexpected punch to the gut, followed by the rest of the beating. "I don't understand... he's never done something like that."

"Potions are not my forte, Harry." Daphne said as she and Neville dragged his trunk up the stairs. Since none of them could do magic in a muggle area, the tall, graceful, Slytherin girl and Neville, who must have grown several inches since the last time they'd met, had volunteered to be the muscle. "And you should really invest in a magical trunk, you know."

"Val?" Tracey asked a bit breathlessly. She was still tired from casting and holding the secrecy charms, but the brief rest had helped. "Any special insights?"

"I..." The shorter blonde witch was staring from Harry, to the house around them, then back to Harry. It was quite obvious she was looking at something none of them could see. Then again, they hadn't been holding onto a precast magic-detecton charm. "Harry, have any wizards visited here? Adults, I mean."

"None that I know of." Harry said, bemused. What was that about? Shouldn't they be evacuating? If Voldemort's worst supporters had escaped from wizarding prison to kill him, as some of his friends were suspecting, he wanted to go somewhere safer... like in another continent. Or Hogwarts - with Dumbledore there, he'd be safe from outside attackers.

"Strange..." Valeria said. "Is it source or cause? If the former, what forced the change? If the latter, what is responsible?"

"Uhuh." Tracey rolled her eyes and lay back on Harry's bed to rest some more. "When she starts talking in English again, wake me up."

The rest of them shared the sentiment, but their friend didn't explain. Instead, she took out a small surgical razor and cut into her own bloody index finger! Then she kneeled and used her finger like a pen, writing four figures on the floor in her own blood. The first looked like an "o" with a little triangle beneath it, the second was a lopsided "x" or cross, the third was an elongated "z" stretched thin, and the last like a sideways "w". Then she exhaled on the symbols as if blowing out candles and harry could have sworn they gleamed for a split second, before fading and drying out, brown dust scattering away.

"Oh yes, it is clear now." She nodded then turned to Harry, a very serious expression on her face. "Someone has put magic on this house. It is powerful, and tied to you."

"What?" Harry exclaimed, but instantly realized that wasn't the right question. "Who would do it? Why? And what does it do?"

"It is no modern spell but a _Galdr,_ a runic enchantment. It is also blood-based." Neville, Tracey and Daphne hissed. Valeria nodded towards the floor. "That is why I only saw it clearly when I used similar means."

"You mean someone came here, cut themselves and wrote things in blood like you did?" Harry shivered. "You said it... it was on me, too?"

"Not even close." She shook her head. "What I did required a few drops of blood and had a simple revealing effect that lasted a few moments - fourth year Ancient Runes level, except for how I wrote said runes. The enchantment on this house has dozens of effects and has lasted at least a decade. I couldn't begin to understand it, let alone cast it. But from what I could tell... well... there's good news, bad news, and ugly news."

"Umm..." Harry wasn't sure how to answer to that. He hadn't even bought his Ancient Runes textbook yet, for Merlin's sake! "Start from the good news?"

"It is powered off you, somehow; you're giving energy to it even as we speak. In most cases that means it was cast for you, not against you."

"Good to know, I guess." Harry said, relieved. "The bad news?"

"There are tracking charms tied to it and you both. Not in the same style of magic - closer to normal spells."

So... someone was watching him? Great, as if all the attention for being the Boy-Who-Lived wasn't enough. "And the ugly?"

"It's... damaged. Something happened to the core enchantments about a year ago and now it seems to be shaking apart. When it does..."

"Could that be what affected the Dursleys like that?" Harry was looking all around him now, willing himself to see what his friend was talking about. That was impossible of course; he hadn't cast any detection spells and if he tried, he'd be expelled for using underage magic. "Is there a way to fix it?"

"Almost certainly, Harry." She frowned, and Daphne and Neville looked alarmed. "In fact, given the power of the enchantments, I'm surprised it hasn't killed them, or blown up the house."

"That's it!" Daphne interjected. "We're not staying here another moment!"

"But what about the Dursleys?" Harry asked, at the same time Neville said "If Harry's being tracked, couldn't the caster follow us?" Tracey on the other hand merely cackled.

"If you're worried about a scrambled enchantment, why don't we tear it down?" She snorted, copying Daphne's desirive attitude from earlier. "It will even save your relatives' worthless hide - not that they'd appreciate it."

"We can't do that. We can't even freely cast magic." Valeria frowned. "I doubt most adult wizards could do it, either."

"Of course we can." Tracey said with a nasty smirk. "We have all we need right here."

 **...**

The blaring of a mental alarm had Albus abandoning his late evening stroll and scrambling for his office. There were very few things that could have activated those warning spells, none of them good. He crossed the Entrance Hall at a dead run when the second and third alarm started wailing, took two secret passages and forced a staircase to shift early, getting to the gargoyle that guarded his office when the remaining alarms were sprung too. Climbing the stairs two at a time - he hadn't a moment to spare for the revolving staicase to get him there in its own speed - he slammed the door open only to find his worst fears had been realized.

The instruments passively observing Number 4 Privet Drive were no longer functioning as they should; a good third of them had already shattered or been reduced to slag, with the rest well in their way to total failure. Losing no time - Harry's safety was his duty - he picked up Fawkes and they both disappeared in a flash of fire.

Their arrival in Number 4 Privet Drive was met with a much brighter and more sinister fiery glow; the Dursleys' house was burning! A cursory examination confirmed the fire was nonmagical in nature, and had started from inside the house. Not that he'd expected otherwise: a magical or external threat would have been stopped by the defensive enchantments he'd erected over a decade ago to protect young Harry. But now those protections were failing one by one. Even if Harry could have called the house his after Albus repaired and rebuilt it, the physical anchor those enchantments had been cast upon was being destroyed by the fire. He could restore the house with little effort but rebuilding the enchantments themselves? Unlikely.

Albus and Fawkes appeared back in the headmaster's office in another flash of fire, Albus reaching for those instruments of his that tracked the health and location of Harry himself. Whoever had taken Harry Potter so violently from the one place he should be able to call home was about to discover why Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore held the title of Grand Sorceror...


	44. Alone in the Dark

**Urazz: Got it in one about the defensive enchantments. Of course, nobody in the story knows that. For the mass breakout, it's too early yet. Daphne both comes from a Dark family that knows what the worst Death Eaters are capable of, and is willing to do anything to achieve success. The driving force behind the whole plan though? That was not her.**

 **Inoeth: A bunch of Death Eaters are now free. Said Death Eaters were imprisoned for going after non-Dark families even after Voldemort's fall. One of Harry's friends has personal history with them.**

 **DaughterofTerpsichore: Dumbledore means well but nobody can hold so many important positions at once without doing at most a half-assed job at them. Is he the Headmaster, responsible for six hundred students, fifteen adults and the largest magical building in Britain? Is he Chief Warlock, responsible for guiding a hundred nobles in at least three separate factions into voting laws, forming policy and presiding over all trials and inheritances for the good of Wizarding Britain? Is he Britain's representative to the ICW and Supreme Mugwump, responsible for worldwide wizarding policies and interactions? Is he Grand Sorcerer, the most powerful wizard in Britain and possibly the world, responsible for exploring the boundaries of magic and personally fighting threats other wizards are unable to handle? Any one of those positions would demand anyone's full attention for them to do a good job and Dumbledore is trying - and probably failing - to fill all of them. Just the fact that he had to leave the school for Ministry business during the Philosopher's Stone fiasco is proof enough of that.**

 **ro781727: More like he used potions on the Dursleys just to live there comfortably. In canon, Harry never acknowledged or acted on his bad treatment at their hands. Here he did and the already weakened intent-based familial protection was damaged and warped. As for others knowing of his treatment, Lockhart was a good teacher in at least some things.**

 **...**

Dementors are blind. Their ability to sense memories and emotions makes them the ultimate guards for no disguises, concealment spells, illusions, invisibility or other magical and mundane means will allow one to deceive them. None can approach Azkaban with a plan to free the prisoners and hope to keep it a secret, and no prisoners can conceive of such a plan, because the Dementors will sense it and stop it. Even magically or physically manipulating another will not work for the Dementors will sense the manipulation and, again, intervene. Thus Azkaban is secure - or so the ministry believes.

The first signs that something was wrong came in the aftermath of the Minister's visit. That article in the paper had given the dog a good laugh. Good enough that a spark of vicious generosity had convinced him to throw it through the bars and into the next cell that dear cousin Bella was being kept. The horrible demon-guards will suck any sort of positive or good thought out of the prisoners. Unfortunately, one's worst thoughts - those promoting fear, doubt, apathy, anger, and the like - not only are not taken away but are also magnified. The dog should know; he'd had to suffer the knowledge of his innocence, the fact that none of his friends and companions in the war had even bothered to get him a trial for twelve hellish years. His dear cousin's raging denials, doubtful mutters, insane rumblings, and even cries were a source of dark amusement to the dog, for who could prevent a seed of doubt from blossoming into new nightmares when under the loving influence of the Dementors? That dark amusement was what made him initially miss what had appeared into his cell.

A little piece of wood, less than a foot long, old and worn. The dog could have sworn he'd seen it appear on the floor in the middle of one of his cousin's rants, but dismissed its presence as a Dementor-induced hallucination. That mistake had almost cost the dog his life. His hallucination, it turned out, had been communal rather than unique, shared by several other inmates. And only a few minutes after the Dementors brought the prisoners their dismal evening meals, the barred door to one of the other cells had exploded. The dog didn't remember much from the chaos that had followed. Realizing what was to come very nearly too late to save himself, he'd picked up the piece of wood, assumed his current form, and slipped through the bars moments before a blasting curse turned his cell into so much rubble.

Without Aurors or any other wizards present, there was nobody to spot an emaciated stray dog making a run for it before a terrible conflagration consumed the uppermost level of the prison. One of the other escapees had been crazy enough or desperate enough to try for one of the few spells who would actually be strengthened by a total lack of positive emotion, and had called forth Fiendfyre - the dog bet it had been dear, sweet, crazy, cousin Bella. The cursed flames couldn't destroy Dementors - nothing could - but heat and bright light made them very uncomfortable and probably bought the escapees a few seconds. It was one of the reasons there were no Dementors in the tropics. And that was where the Ministry's idiocy at using Dementors bit them in the arse: once any accomplished wizard had a wand, they had far too many options to be contained by anything short of another wizard. Case in point, Dementors floated. A couple bubblehead and warming charms later, several Death Eaters had jumped into the water and vanished. The dog had followed their example.

 **...**

The dog ran. He had been running for over a week now.

Unwilling to Apparate and thus draw the Ministry's attention, he was limited to overland travel on foot. Of course, with even a crude, old wand at hand the trip had become infinitely easier. Water? _Aguamenti_ covered it. Food? Summoning wild animals or fish from a river wasn't hard. A place to sleep? Warming, water-repelling, softening, cleaning, and similar simple charms could make just about any place comfortable enough. As long as he stayed in the wilds where no underage wizard lived, the Trace wouldn't reveal his magic. So he had time - time to think.

Who would arrange for a group of Death Eaters (and one presumed Death Eater) to get wands? He had no idea. How? That was an easier question - and came back to the Ministry's own idiocy. From long pranking experience he knew shrinking charms and Transfiguration were the best ways to conceal an object. He knew the latter worked by the countless times his clothes, carried items, and wand had melded into his Animagus form when he changed shape. Dementors couldn't see and only had a rudimentary sense of objects; as long as they weren't obvious, the wands wouldn't be detected. From there, getting them into the prisoners' cells wouldn't be hard; the Ministry itself had been charming messages to fly themselves to specific destinations for decades. The unknown Death Eater collaborator could even cover his own tracks by having the transfiguration, or whatever other concealment he'd used, fade hours or even days after arrival so by the time the escape happened, he'd be long gone.

And now they came to the 'why', and the dog's greatest fear. Had the unknown perpetrator engineered the mass escape to help the Death Eaters themselves? The dog doubted it. To have them find their long-gone master? Even more unlikely. Snippets heard over the years had him sharing his deranged cousin's belief that Voldemort wasn't gone, only greatly weakened - and most Death Eaters only followed power. The only reason he could see one of those bastards putting so much effort into was revenge... and everybody knew Harry would soon start his second year at Hogwarts in only a month or two.

That is why he'd run all the way through the country and towards a small, unimportant village in Surrey, not thirty miles from the outskirts of London. Few people knew Lily Potter still had family among the living. Fewer still knew where they lived. Of those few, those that were aware the Boy-Who-Lived had been sent to live with them could be counted on one's fingers... or could have, over a decade ago. What if the Death Eaters had found out? What if they were heading over there even then?

The dog ran.

 **...**

"What is the meaning of this, Dumbledore?"

Augusta Longbottom was not a witch to take lightly. With hair prematurely white like so many others that lived through the war - sixty was only early middle age for powerful witches and wizards - and wrinkles carved by a near-permanent severe scowl rather than time, she looked like an old grandmother, and not a noble Lady from an Ancient House that was a decade younger than Hagrid. But in situations such as these, when the circumstances annoyed her enough, she could look remarkably like a miniature fire-breathing dragon.

Daphne and Neville's plan had been less hasty than Valeria had initially thought. Neville had already secured his grandmother's permission for Harry to stay in Longbottom Manor for the remaining months until September 1st, so when their group had arrived the older witch had welcomed them with open arms. The Manor was one of the larger private-owned houses Valeria had ever seen or heard of. While only about half as large as the fabled Wentworth Woodhouse (the largest private house in Britain and one of the largest in all of Europe) it was still enormous: three hundred feet long if it was an inch, a hundred and fifty thousand square feet of floorspace, and surrounded by an estate nearing ten square _miles._

Of course, the day-to-day expenses for such an enormous building were far less of a burden for a wizarding family than they would have been for muggles. For one thing, the entire estate was hidden from muggle scrutiny with so many concealment and muggle-repelling spells it might as well not exist. Thus, it could not be taxed - or even put on any sort of map or archive. For another, with a couple of House Elves at hand to do the housework, maintenance was a nonissue. It took a house elf less than ten minutes to clean and maintain a room magically so the two of them could clean the entire building once per day. And with durability enchantments, magical fires and lights, conjuring and vanishing, the house had no need for electricity, fuel, water, and many other supplies. Wizards could amass enormous amounts of physical wealth without many of the problems their muggle counterparts faced.

Of course, every time things were going well Valeria expected something to go wrong. She was proven right once again when less than half an hour into their tour of the Longbottom Manor, a rather furious Albus Dumbledore appeared before them in a flash of fire.

"Perhaps I should be asking you that, Augusta." The Headmaster said while looking at them intensely, his usual smile evident by its absence. "Why is Mister Potter here, and not with his guardians? What happened back at his home, for him to leave like that?"

"However worried you might be for the boy's safety, you cannot barge into another's home unannounced like this, Chief Warlock!" The Regent of House Longbottom answered firmly. "Or do you think me a Death Eater who had kidnapped the boy? You should have known he was safe the moment you discovered his location!"

"Headmaster..." Valeria asked with false timidity. "How did you know where Harry was? Do you have tracking and monitoring charms on him?"

"Harry's safety is paramount, Miss Campbell. There are far too many bigots and dark wizards that would target him." The ancient wizard sighed and turned back to Madam Longbottom. "When I saw his home reduced to ashes... I admit I acted more rashly than I should have. I had taken precautions I'd considered sufficient to prevent any attack upon him there, magical or mundane. That they had managed to protect him for over a decade only to fail now..."

"I see." Madam Longbottom said, severe scowl fading. "Well, Harry is safe for now. I'd be more than happy to be his host for the remainder of the Summer, provided Mister Potter himself agrees of course."

"I do!" Harry jumped in before anyone could say anything against that suggestion. "I mean, Neville is one of my best friends. Spending the Summer with him would be awesome!"

"Very well." The Headmaster sighed again. "My apologies for my intrusion, Augusta. It seems you have the situation well in hand."

"No problem, Albus." The severe witch smiled for the first time. "It will do my grandson some good to spend some time with friends. They might even help him - sometimes I despair of him ever growing out of his timidity."

"Gran!" Several people chuckled at that.

"Headmaster... may I ask you a question other than this one?" Valeria said, drawing the old wizard's attention and smile.

"Go ahead, Miss Campbell. I shall endeavor to answer it truthfully, to the extend of my understanding and yours." In short, if he believed she couldn't handle it, he would not answer. She hated how adults could be so patronizing without even noticing it.

"The monitoring and security spells you must have on Harry... why don't you have them on more people?" She paused, trying to phrase her reasoning in just the right way. "I mean, I've been reading on the civil war Wizarding Britain went through over a decade ago. The numbers of muggleborns who died... if there is still a risk for Harry, would there not be a risk for those of us who live in Muggle homes? Our families cannot defend us from magical attacks, and even if we knew how to ourselves, we're not allowed to. Can't anything be done to keep us safe?"

"That is a very good point my dear. Unfortunately, there are laws that limit what I can do in a muggle area." Right... laws he'd completely disregarded when trying to protect Harry himself; Harry had not even been aware of the protections. "Still, I will look into the matter. Maybe more protection for muggleborns is warranted, after all."

The Headmaster left after that, in a hurry to return to his investigations and meddling. As soon as he was gone, Valeria found herself under the gimlet stare of both Augusta Longbottom and her friends.

"After what you told me of Mister Potter's situation, I do not believe for a moment you'd ask for similar protections, let alone for tracking spells to be put on you by Albus himself." The older witch frowned. "What exactly are you up to now, young lady? Neville and Miss Greengrass have already proven us older people should beware of any teenager's plots."

"Fairness and accountability, Madam Longbottom." She smiled. "Either the Headmaster is fair and has to work to protect many muggleborn families, leaving him with less time to meddle, or he isn't - at which point his meddling is revealed as soon as we formally ask why he only protected Harry. I have no problem with Harry being protected as long as he actually is. Professor Dumbledore's protections obviously failed somehow, and neither Harry nor anybody else knew it. Magic is dangerous; mistakes like that can cost lives."

"I see." She turned to her grandson. "I'm pleased you've made friends that are both clever and caring, Neville. I'm even more pleased not all of them are boys."

Neville's face turned instantly tomato red. When everyone else registered just what the older witch had meant, Harry had laughed, Tracey had giggled, and Daphne and Valeria had rolled their eyes in unison. This was going to be an interesting Summer.

 **...**

The dog had finally reached its destination. There it had seen not the quaint suburbal home he'd expected, but a pile of blackened rubble still smoking from the recent fire that consumed them. The sharp tang of smoke still clung to the Summer night air, and the entire neighborhood was still whispering about how quickly the fire had spread, how the entire house had been reduced to rubble and ashes long before any firemen could arrive.

Along in the darkness under his Animagus form, Sirius Orion Black howled.


	45. Invitations

**Guest: Read on!**

 **Son of Whitebeard: Huh? I don't get what you mean - Sirius is very much alive.**

 **Daphne was the organizer, Neville was the instigator, Tracey covered them magically and had the idea to burn the house, Valeria was good enough with Charms and Runes to notice the problem with Dumbledore's enchantments. Neville's Gran supported them because she now sees how her grandson is improving in leaps and bounds now that he has a few good friends. But yeah, nobody quite expected them to burn down the place - though Augusta Longbottom had no second thoughts after they reported Harry being abused and the magical backlash.**

 **ro781727: Can't answer most of those due to spoilers and stuff. One is answered in this chapter though.**

 **ReBein: Thanks!**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, JK Rowling does. If I did, Harry would be showing his Slytherin traits a bit more. Also, the HP books wouldn't have sold nearly so much. I think it all balanced out. :)**

 **...**

With a barely audible 'pop' of displaced air, a very tall man came out of the darkness. His appearance was so sudden he might as well have sprung up from the ground. He hadn't, of course; he'd leave that to those Herbologists eccentric enough and good at Transfiguration enough to turn themselves to plants. He had simply Apparated.

Wide tree trunks were barely visible through mist thick enought to cut with a knife, undergrowth dense enough to prevent conventional travel between them. The forest was too old and too overgrown for the stars and moon, and too far from civilization for other lights. Moisture clung into everything and water dripped from everywhere, making the soil underneath into a near-swamp and bare rocks into slippery slopes that could be deadly if one was unfortunate. An eerie silence permeated the woods, everything decent and wholesome evident by its absence.

Despite all that, the tall man was not inconvenienced all all. Dripping water touched neither skin nor cloth, mud clung not to him, and each step he took with surety, the undergrowth seemingly scrambling to open a path for him, bare rock as good as the sturdiest steps. Those things alone would have earned him the enmity of those who dwelled in such places, and his image did not help matters. From his tall and comfortable boots, to his elaborate robes of deep blue silk and silvery decorations of constellations, to his purple traveling cloak and square, wire-frame glasses, his long silver hair and even longer beard, to -above all else- the foot and three inches of knobbly wood in his had he was not welcome. Not that minor inconveniences would stop one such as Albus Dumbledore.

Wizarding Britain's most powerful wizard had naught to fear from any denizens of this forest, magical or otherwise. He could thus tread where others could not, following the trail of a friend who, in his grief, had abandoned all he knew to live with those who were like him on the outside but not the inside - no matter what he and most of the civilized world believed. Perhaps Dumbledore could have searched for said friend years ago when he first disappeared but, unless many lives were in danger, the old wizard respected personal choice. In addition to that one most important of reasons, post-war Wizarding Britain was a dangerous place to be if one shared the nature of those who dwelled in such places. Better to be alive in dismal but survivable conditions that be killed by overzealous Aurors hunting the remaining servants of Voldemort, or be taken in and placed somewhere that was less a prison and more Hell on Earth.

A wide, deep, but low-ceilinged cave loomed in the face of the cliff before him. At its entrance, two men kept watch not by standing but by sitting down on all fours, their few clothes so threadbare, torn and full of holes to barely warrant the name. Their skin was crisscrossed with scars, some old, some new, all of them beyond healing, magical or mundane. Their hair was long, tangled and full of twigs, leaves and dirt, evidence of long years spent in the woods, while their eyes gleamed in the dark, in shapes and colors not entirely human. Their nails were long, yellowed, and crusted with filth, their teeth little better. Albus Dumbledore approached them anyway, calm, and smiling, and not at all like his evening stroll had taken him too close to a den of werewolves.

"Good evening, gentlemen." He said in greeting. "I am looking for one Remus Lupin. Could you please point me towards his location?"

"What do you mean, 'good evening'?" One of the dismal-looking men asked in a voice dry and shaky from disuse. "Do you wish us good evening however absurd that wish might be, or mean it is good evening for you when it's obviously not for us; that you feel good this evening when we do not; or that it is an evening to be good on when one isn't a werewolf?" And then the cursed man laughed eerily, more due to insanity than amusement.

"That I could make it a good evening, for a time." Albus Dumbledore said and sighed. Their curse, still beyond any known cure, had these men and possibly many others in the cave beyond them wallowing in their misery because they chose the safety of their fellow humans over their own gratification. Had they embraced their predatory natures instead, their curse would fill them with excitement and a boundless energy even as they feasted on human flesh once per month. A rather terrible way to live, if it could even be called that. "A short time for you, but considerably longer for the one I am seeking. You see, I have a job for him. A place to work for a year where being a werewolf would not be a problem at all."

"Oh, sure." Said in disbelief the werewolf who'd talked back. "A job in your Department of Mysteries perhaps, or in the Beast Division of your Ministry, where all he'll have to do would be to sit and relax while Magizoologists and Potions Masters prod, and pierce, and cut him up, or feed him barely-nonlethal experimental concoctions. How could you further your research into our kind, after all?"

"I don't think he has ulterior motives, John." The other werewolf spoke for the first time. His voice was tired and dejected, a man who'd been kicked by Fate too many times and given up, but somehow managed to hold on to his sanity. "Professor Dumbledore is a good man and a great wizard. He wouldn't do something like that."

"Sure he wouldn't, Cassius mate. Just like growing up a wizard totally didn't turn your brain into mush." That insane, teeth-rattling laugh again. "'Course, I was born muggle. Blatant lies don't work on me. What would a wand-wielder offer us anyway? Werewolves aren't allowed to own enchanted items or live in magical houses."

"That is true." Dumbledore said. Unfortunate, ugly, blatantly discriminatory, but true. "This however is a cave, is it not? It is most definitely not a house, a building, or even an item, however one tries to stretch the definition. Why if one were to extend its internal dimensions, make it warmer, protect it from the elements, erect a barrier that would clean those that crossed it and enchant a few square feet of it so that any mundane organic object - clothing, boots, paper, quills, ink, food - left there would be slowly multiplied... well, the Ministry couldn't complain about it, could they? After all, there is no law about caves and magic."

 **...**

"Whoa, this is a bloody big house mate." Ron said, trying to keep all traces of resentment to himself. Yeah, the house was big and awesome - nothing his family would ever have, that was for certain. He still wouldn't like living in it with only his grandma and a pair of house elves, and semi-insane relatives like Neville's uncle Algie occasionally visiting. After the stern talking-to Tracey and Daphne had given him at the end of last year, there were a few things he'd decided to keep to himself if he could help it.

"Sure is." Neville replied, collapsing on a sofa next to Harry after a long but happy day touring the greenhouses. "Used to get lost a lot here, when I was little. Gran would usually find me hours later in the seventh bedroom, or the northern tower, or anywhere else my feet took me." He sighed contendedly. "Didn't mind it though; even pretended to get lost a few times when Uncle Algie was visiting."

"So Ron," Harry said to change the awkward subject. "How was Egypt?"

"Totally awesome! Bill guided us through some magical tombs muggles can't see or get to. Told us how his job was to break horrible ancient curses and enchantments to recover the gold and artifacts long-dead wizards left inside." The redhead laughed. "Managed to rile up mum real good. Then we got to a tomb muggles had managed to stumble into somehow and the curses totally got them. Their skeletons had a second head, or multiple arms, and other fun stuff. Mum didn't let Ginny into that last one, said it was too scary and dangerous."

"Yeah, right. No tomb ever built was as dangerous as ol' Hogwarts and we all go there." The three boys laughed again at Harry's comment.

"Anyway, the night before we left I asked Bill a few things about Ancient Runes over dinner."

"Hey Harry..." asked Neville ominously. "Your scar sent you any visions or something? Ron talking about lessons during Summer must be a sign of the end times, right?"

"Totally!" Harry stage-whispered. "He's even talking about a class we haven't even started yet."

"Oh come on!" Ron exclaimed, face crimson. "OK, I might've been a tad lazy last year but I wasn't so bad! And Bill makes them Runes sound fascinating - you should have heard him!" Not to mention finding all that treasure - even having to give most of it to Gringotts still left Bill rich enough to buy a pair of dragonhide boots and some robes of acromantula silk that must have cost more than all the clothes the rest of them wore. For once, Ron was very happy that Valeria had pushed him into that bet. For the first time in his life he was feeling motivated to do well in his classes. "Even if you got to work to carve all those runes, Bill says you can do all kinds of things with them."

"What if you didn't carve them?" Harry asked with a curious frown on his face. "If, I dunno, just wrote them?"

"Nope." Ron shook his head. That was the first thing he'd asked. He might be willing, even eager to learn a few useful things now, but he still tried to put as little effort as was actually needed. "Bill says that making the rune must be important to you somehow. Writing on a piece of parchment is easy and cheap so it'll barely have an effect worth mentioning. Cutting it into wood or cloth is only a bit better. Carving it into rock or metal makes it important because of all the effort you put into it, and expensive rock or metal even more 'cause money has meaning, you know?"

"How about blood?" Harry said. "Isn't blood even more personal because it's, I dunno, yours already?" Ron stared.

"Harry, blood magic is dark. Everyone knows that." Ron wasn't sure why the other two boys had disbelieving expressions - especially Neville who'd grown into the wizarding world. "Most decent people won't even touch it - the Ministry can take you in for questioning if you use it. Unless you're a goblin - the goblins are allowed to use it for some reason."

"Okay, got it." Harry and Neville exchanged looks. "Anything else interesting happen in your holiday?"

"Sure! Fred and George almost managed to trap Percy in a pyramid but mum saved him. And she got me an all-new wand as soon as we got back; check it out!" He drew it from his back pocket and gave it to them for a close-up. "Fourteen inches, willow, unicorn tail hair. All warmth and sparks when I first touched it; Ollivander says it definitely chose me. Too bad I have to wait till we get to Hogwarts to test it."

"You don't." Harry and Neville said in unison with broad smiles.

"I don't?" Ron asked in confusion. "Why not?"

"Gran invited you for the rest of the Summer, too. Even offered to side-along Apparate you every evening if Mrs Weasley doesn't want you sleeping here." Neville shook his head. "I think she did it for me, more than anything. Invited the girls too, though only Tracey's free to come."

"How does that help me use my new wand?" Ron was still perplexed.

"Because the Ministry can only detect when magic is used around underage wizards and witches but not who does it." Neville grinned. "And Gran gave us permission to practice as much as we'd like!"

"..." Ron was gobsmacked. All those times mum had taken their wands when they returned from school - it was because of that little detail nobody had bothered to tell him before? Made sense though; she wouldn't need to do it if the Ministry could track them. And the Ministry couldn't... because mum and dad used magic in the house all the time! Come to think of it, weren't magical explosions and accidents a frequent occurrence in the Twins' room? How did they even manage that without their wands?

"Ron?" Harry asked. "You OK mate?"

This Summer was going to be awesome!


	46. Perspectives

**Urazz: Yeah, Ron comes from a family totally against Dark Magic. On the other hand, Neville has stronger personal reasons to despise it.**

 **morganna12: Updates are slowing down a bit as Summer comes to an end. With a real life job taking up time again, I'll probably need to slow down to three - four times a week instead of seven.**

 **ro781727: Lots and lots of things. Summer is usually the time she spends with her family and between 'books' is when I give readers some glimpses into how the Campbell family works. Also, good time for Valeria's full name to come up.**

 **PeliusAnar: Thanks. As I said above though, I'll need to slow down a bit.**

 **a1993: Nope, that's intentional. Shows how seriously affected Sirius is to momentarily lose track of the years like that.**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, JK Rowling does. If I did, the books would have more scenes from other perspectives. Also, they wouldn't sell very well.**

 **...**

The last time Melissa Campbell had been truly happy was when her daughter had come back after ten months in the best magical school in Europe, possibly the world, with the best grades in her year and close to, but not quite, the best grades one could get. Melissa delayed one of her frequent trips abroad, Owen cancelled a business meeting and they'd welcomed her back with a big party and countless questions about magic, her lessons, her new school, and her friends. It had been a perfect day. The morning that followed changed everything.

The Campbells were no strangers to the worst humanity had to offer. Melissa had been to several warzones, dealt with politicians and ambassadors, seen the horror and devastation of war. Owen often dealt with shady individuals due to his background in Law and his kind of enterprise, from smugglers, to gangsters, to killers, even corporate executives on occasion. They'd actually met on the job years before talks of marriage came up. Despite all that, Valeria's story of possession had shaken them. There was something viscerally terrifying and intimately horrendous in sharing your own body and mind with another. It had only gotten worse as the dangers of the magical world had been explained to them - as much as an intelligent and perceptive but still young twelve year old had known them. And as the months passed, more and more disturbing news arrived via the strangely intelligent owls or reported personally. Expeditions in monster-infested forests that a platoon of soldiers might not have survived, skirmishes with other children using lethal magic, armored snakes the size of buses that could kill you with their stare... And now this!

"What can we expect, now that these people are out of prison?" It took all her training as a diplomat to mask her fear and uncertainty from her daughter. "I mean... they sound like Nazis. What if they decide to hit families of muggleborns and damn the consequences?"

"Mother, Harry could level this house if he really wanted to." Her beloved daughter bit her lip in thought. "Aim a wand, say the word, and you're throwing a molotov bomb. Do it a few times, the house goes up like a box full of matches." Her daughter pointed at the wizarding newspaper. Melissa looked at it to see an emaciated, filthy man with long black hair so tangled one could not see his face sneering at her from his moving picture. She shuddered; if anyone looked like a hardened criminal, it was this Sirius Black guy.

"And this man? What can he do?" He looked like he'd spent years in some hellish third-world prison, where what government existed literally threw you in and then threw away the key - if they didn't outright kill you that was. "He's their leader, yes?" Though the only woman among the nine men was not to be underestimated; not only did she look insane, but Melissa also knew women among such crowds were either broken tools or dangerous enough to more than hold their own.

"He was a spy, actually. Only really used one curse in the open, that the Ministry knows of." Valeria bit her lip thoughtfully again. "Though from my research, that spell wouldn't be so hard to pull off for a Hogwarts graduate; it's crude and direct, lacks complexity."

"So, not a fighter then. Still, masterminds are actually more dangerous than brutes..." She narrowed her eyes. For a split second there she could have sworn she saw relief in her daughter's face. "Valeria Isra Campbell! What are you not telling me?"

"It's not very important..." And if she believed that, Melissa would eat her old boots. The ones she'd worn in Borneo - no ketchup.

"You do remember I am your mother, right?" She asked dryly. "I have thirty years of experience reading people, twelve of them with you, and my job involves dealing with liars of all kinds. Spill."

"OK. But you asked for it." She seemed to deflate, abandoning her own pretense at not being worried. "Sirius Black was sent to prison for killing thirteen people with that one curse. He blew up a street, all the way down to the sewers. The old articles were very sketchy on details - didn't have anything else. But that isn't the worst of it. From what I found out, many wizards simply aren't familiar with area attacks because they only ever fight a couple of opponents at most. Hogwarts has had appaling Defense teachers for several decades too, so that's a factor. Any wizard that really wanted to cause damage to muggle buildings..." She laughed mirthlessly. "That atrocious new skyscraper in Canary Wharf? A wizard my age could bring it down. Broomstick, boulders, Shrinking Charms, fly the pebbles over the place, cancel the magic, no more building. Alternatively, enough Softening Charms at the base and it'll collapse under its own weight. That's why I asked the Headmaster for magical protections on any houses muggleborns lived in. Without magic, any house is a half-second of effort away from becoming a crater where adult wizards are concerned."

"Oh, sweetie." No wonder she didn't want to tell her. "You don't have to keep things from me to keep me happy; that's a parent's job. Why don't we go for an ice cream and relax? You can tell me all about how insanely dangerous the magical world is in later, all right?"

They went. That night and many nights that followed, neither mother nor daughter slept well. No wizard visited to give them protection from the worst criminals of the wizarding world.

 **...**

The figure in the black robe focused for a moment on his detection devices, then cursed.

The mass breakout was the only part of the plan that had worked well. Providing wands from the old family vault had been simple enough, with how Ministry security and procedures had eroded over the past twelve years. Malfoy and his ilk were doing as well as could be expected on that fron at least, though not as well as he'd have liked. Observing the escapees was not an issue. Wands scraped, wore away, or were otherwise damaged often enough and they kept working with little loss of efficiency as long as the damage was superficial. So why not carve tiny runic inscriptions of a locating and a listening spell on the wands' bases before giving them away? Only someone like Moody would check for such, and since they weren't normal charms, they wouldn't show up on basic detectors.

Except Azkaban had robbed the escapees of most of their wits. Not only had the group of ten split in three, but those smaller teams had been wandering aimlessly all over Britain. Their conversation was half insane ramblings and half incomprehensible muttering most of the time, none of it very useful. There had been talk of striking at the houses of mudbloods, wreacking havoc in a muggle city, or even carrying out an attack on the Ministry! Any one of those actions would see all of the black-robed figure's plans in ruins within all of ten minutes!

In the political side of things, that old muggle-loving goat was causing trouble. There had been concerns about the mudbloods from some of the so-called Light families, of course. Many expected Dumbledore to use his influence to have protections raised around the muggleborns' homes. He hadn't. Instead, he was asking for all wizarding families to improve the defenses of their own manors as much as they could. When some had complained about the country not being at war, he'd reminded the Wizengamot just what kind of Dark spell had been unleashed within Azkaban. The Fiendfyre had reduced the prison's entire upper floor into slag, trapping some of the dementors under the collapsed ceiling and panicking half the people in the Ministry. Such magic, Dumbledore had argued, would casually blast through any peacetime protections the average wizarding home would have, incinerating those inside before they could react. Thus justifying his request, he'd then offered to personally enchant the residences of anyone who couldn't afford a Charms Master or Runemaster that could do it. The black-robed figure gritted its teeth at the memory; Dumbledore raising defenses against that many houses would make everything harder in the future. At least Malfoy and Nott had had the presence of mind to object on the basis of privacy and halt any such actions for the time being. How people could be certain, they'd asked, that their privacy wouldn't be violated by revealing spells hidden into the offered protections if the caster hadn't been oathbound and certified for the job?

And today the plan had taken another hit. One of the three groups of escapees had crossed beneath the Channel and disappeared beyond his trackers' reach. The other had turned northwards, moving in a straight line towards Hogwarts of all places. The last, only a single individual, had been disappearing for longer and longer periods from his trackers. It was as if the marked wand he'd been given was vanishing then returning periodically - but that was impossible. After losing the wand, how would that prisoner make it magically reappear while wandless? At least the lone escapee seemed to be going in the same general direction as the second group.

Abandoning all plans to make contact, the black-robed figure considered other options. Was the Master still alive? Rumors from Hogwarts indicated he was. That would explain the Dark Mark; faint, but still there. What to do about it though? He had no idea where to look and his responsibilities left him with little time. No, better to prepare, plan, manipulate events to the Master's favor. And if the opportunity arose...

 **...**

No matter what others said, Bella was not mad. She wasn't! Had it not been her, who'd led them under the sea and away from the Dementors? Had it not been her, who'd led them in finishing the Master's last command? Who still led them towards it, despite the many setbacks? All the others knew was how to complain, complain, complain! Poor, foolish, mentally-addled boys. How was it her fault that the Ministry could track Apparition and thus they had to avoid it? Why should she know Geography any better than them? As if proper purebloods had any reason to learn beyond the basics!

She checked around herself and the others, half-certain the Ministry was on to them. Cast a few decection and revealing spells, too. It wasn't paranoia if Alastor Moody under an invisibility cloak was out to get you. Cackled a bit, when she found nothing. No particular reason to, besides keeping the boys on their toes. Oh, and because it was fun. She cackled again, and saw Anty making a face at her from the corner of one eye.

Let them make faces. Bella was far better a witch than they'd ever be wizards. She'd been and still was the Dark Lord's most valued and powerful servant. When he returned - and he would, their lasting Dark Marks were proof enough of that - she'd greet him with many accomplishments in his name. That is why she led the others. Her status and ability had also been how she'd noticed the gifts their unknown benefactor had left them. Rune-based trackers? Not a bad idea, but against a witch of her ability? Laughable. Instead of disabling them, she'd instructed the others to communicate important things only through writing, and to say out loud some false information for would-be listeners. Were they witches and wizards or not? They could manage nonverbal Flagrate spells to write on air - it was even good practice. And if they couldn't? There was always mud for the incompetents.

They'd separated only a day or two ago. Her half of the team would be hunting down the Prophecy brats. Selwyn's would quietly disappear... then find the source of that article. Someone was trying to discredit the Dark Lord and it wasn't Dumbledore. The old blind idiot had a pathological tendency to keep secrets that, according to the Dark Lord's own words, had been a great boon to their side. Being much wiser, the Dark Lord had naturally shared his more important secrets with his inner circle, including the Prophecy. She cackled again. Those idiots at the Wizengamot believed she and the others had been looking for their Master when they attacked the Longbottoms. As if they needed to - had he not promised to return, even from death? No, they'd been planning to take out the brats, make the world safe for him. She'd begged the Dark Lord to let her handle it that Halloween, but he'd ignored her. If her Master had one small, justifiable fault, that was his pride. He wanted to break the Prophesy himself. She'd tried to finish the job after his incapacitation but she'd been too late. Well, this time she wouldn't fail.

This time, Potter and Longbottom would die.


	47. Demons

**a1993: Not quite. Doing major magic (including defensive enchantments) in muggle areas is against the Statute of Secrecy. With Death Eaters and Purebloods having a strong influence if not outright control of the Ministry, Dumbledore could never suggest protecting the houses of muggleborn students and hope to have it approved. That's why he tried to have protections being erected in all houses, not just those of muggleborns, but the purebloods are blocking him.**

 **ro781727: Bella is being delusional. She's not quite as insane as many people believe - she could never have used, let alone successfully taught Occlumency if she was - but she still has major issues.**

 **x2leoj: Val's skills lie in other types of magic. Dueling -fighting by relying on speed and reflexes, throwing targeted spells with great accuracy, dodging, and employing brief blocks- is more Harry's and Daphne's skill. With her talents, it would be far more effective to fight through other means. After all, Dumbledore is an aging wizard into his second century that never bothered to physically dodge or cast shields in his duels and still managed to force the Dark Wanker into retreat.**

 **Disclaimer: Age below forty? Check. Residence in Greece? Check. Bank account practically empty? Check. Obviously not JK Rowling and thus can't own Harry Potter? Check and check.**

 **...**

Try as she might, Valeria managed to find neither Daphne nor Tracey on any of the train's many compartments. By the time she'd been convinced they weren't coming, she'd walked up and down the Hogwarts Express no less than four times. Neville, Ron, Harry, and Ron's sister Ginny had taken up the last compartment at the train's rear. Since a sleeping adult man in worn, patched, threadbare clothes took up the remaining seats, she'd decided not to intrude and find her own seat somewhere less crowded.

"Excuse me? Is this seat taken?" She asked, after she'd knocked on the door then entered a compartment with two girls and two boys around her age and one older boy two or three years her senior. "Every other compartment is full, or contains idiots."

"Idiots?" Asked the girl with her dark red hair in a long plait down her back. From what she'd seen in her first two years, she usually was a cheerful, pleasant girl but now she wore a severe scowl - possibly due to Valeria's last comment - and she couldn't for the life of her recall her name.

"Bigots who don't want a muggleborn who is their superior in all things but pedigree to stink up their compartment." She rolled her eyes at that absurdity. "Oh, and bigots who don't believe a Slytherin could be anything other than a dark witch." To be fair, she actually was a dark witch by some definitions. And while prejudice against the Dark Arts was still prejudice, she didn't think it would be wise to bring it up. What they didn't know wouldn't hurt them, in this one case at least.

"You're welcome to sit with us, if you want." Said the older boy with an easy smile. Tall, brunet, athletic, very easy on the eyes if she said so herself. Both confident and friendly, too. If she wasn't careful she might develop a crush, and having that in common with far too many others - if the second girl's occasional glances his way were any indication - would give Tracey too much ammunition... of the nuclear variety. "I'm Cedric, by the way. Cedric Diggory, fifth year Hufflepuff."

"Valeria Campbell, pleased to meet you." She replied, then nodded at her robes. "Slytherin, if it somehow escaped your notice. I'm in my third year."

"Bones. Susan Bones." Said the redhead seriously as they formally shook hands. Ah, so that was her name... wait. "I thought you were the heiress of the Bones family?"

"And yet I am only a lowly halfbrood." Susan smiled. "Since greatmother Seraphina married outside her class and lived happily ever after, several other members of the family have followed her example. It annoyed those bigots you mentioned to no end." She suddenly seemed very sad for some reason but despite Valeria's questioning stare, she didn't elaborate.

"Hi, I'm Hannah Abbott!" The blonde with her hair in pigtails said cheerfully when the silence lingered a bit too long. Valeria shook the excitable Hufflepuff's hand too, and finally the black-and-yellow robes they all wore registered. And she'd dared imply Cedric's powers of observation were lacking? In her defense, she'd had quite a few things on her mind but still...

"Hey, is it true you helped Potter with the Chamber of Secrets?" The stout-looking boy with blondish hair and dark eyes asked. "Justin is my friend. Killing the monster who made him lose several months out of our second year was a good thing. I'm Ernie Macmillan, by the way." She was quite sure his actual name was Ernest; him using a nickname with her was a concession Purebloods used as an offer of friendship - and after hearing from Harry about the two boys meeting and 'Ernie' throwing his family's blood purity in Harry's face, she was fairly sure the offer was sincere.

"Oh come on, Ernie!" The third boy in the compartment complained. He was another blond, tall and skinny, with an upturned nose. "You can't believe a sn... someone from her House would help kill their Founder's pet monster! And to go against their Founder's own Heir at that!"

"Zach, we've talked about this." Susan said with an air of exasperation that only came from dealing with stubborn, dim-witted purebloods. "The Heir of a Founder has little to no authority passed down from said Founder - not after a thousand years!" The redhead turned to Valeria, not even noticing the boy scowling at her words. Interesting. "Ignore him. Protests or not, he was plenty relieved when the Basilisk was finally dead. You and your friends are welcome in our company any time."

"He is right, though." Valeria said, surprising the five of them. "I didn't help Harry in his fight with the Basilisk or the Heir of Slytherin. The plan had been for me to sneak up to them under an invisibility cloak and curse them in the back while Harry held their attention. Unfortunately, avoiding a sixty-foot snake in close quarters is really hard: the Basilisk took me out early on and Harry had to battle both it and the Heir on his own."

"Really?" Asked Cedric, impressed. "How did Potter get out of that in one piece?"

"No idea." Sheer damn luck, most likely. That, along with reflexes faster than she'd ever seen in a boy her age, help from a Phoenix, the Sword of Gryffindor, and possibly the Heir's own arrogance. "I did see him reflect a Killing Curse back at the Heir's face though."

"He WHAT?" That came from more than one gobsmacked Hufflepuff, which made Valeria grin.

"Look, guys. This is probably Harry's story to tell, OK?" She wasn't above spreading a few tantalizing tidbits about, though. Much as Harry hated being famous, that fame had already helped see Hagrid exonerated. If it was a choice between Harry feeling the pressure of his celebrity status but having a weapon against the Dark Wanker's followers and his being quietly ignored while the Death Eaters in the Ministry leveraged their positions to help their boss into power... she knew which one she'd pick. And she, Daphne, and Tracey would kick the naive Gryffindor till he realized what his isolationism was doing, if it came to that. "If you approached him, I'm sure he'd share a few details. Maybe if you told him how you felt about falsely accusing him first and asked him to forgive you..."

"What do you mean?" Zacharias Smith demanded rudely. "We didn't..."

"Yes, we did." Cedric said firmly. "And I for one don't feel very good about it." The older boy shook his head. "But enough of this heavy discussion. This is a new school year and we should all be excited about it, not talking about such dark events." He forced a smile on his face and turned towards Hannah, Susan, and Valeria herself. "What about you, ladies? What electives did you pick for this year?"

 **...**

"I still think you're crazy for signing up for all twelve classes this year." Susan said several hours later. Cedric had left to do his rounds as a Prefect and Smith had been ignoring them the entire trip, which left poor Ernie in the awkward position of being outnumbered three-to-one by the girls. He'd persevered, showing the famous Hufflepuff tenacity, and he'd slowly opened up to them. It helped that he was very academically-oriented and their discussion had drifted back to their studies rather than more embarassing or 'girly' subjects. Hannah had tried to steer it that way often enough - possibly to tease her fellow Hufflepuff. She reminded Valeria of a more social, female version of Neville; Hannah shared the Gryffindor boy's timidity -though it was less pronounced in her case-, his cheerfulness, pleasant outlook, friendly personality, and love for all things green and dirty. Susan on the other hand had a no-nonsense attitude and conviction, and a suspicious, politically savvy demeanor that reminded her of Daphne. Despite being softer around the edges and a bit more naive than her dour friend, Valeria found her a good conversationalist with surprising insights into the Ministry's workings. She wouldn't mind having her for a friend - and not because her aunt was the head of the DMLE.

"Come on, Bones, you know I'm into Arithmancy." She teased. "If I couldn't be in seven classes, I had to be in twelve. After seven, the number twelve is the most magically significant number after all." In fact, while seven represented some of the deeper mysteries of magic, twelve appeared in far more magically significant situations. Hardly a surprise, given the Sumerian origins of Arithmancy.

"I wish you many happy hours with the strictest teacher in Hogwarts." Susan said with a grimace. Professor Vector was stricter than Professor Snape? Oh dear. "It's Muggle Studies and Ancient Runes for me. Auntie said they're essential for some positions in the Ministry. You wouldn't believe how many foreign Ministries totally ignore the English language but still use two-millennia-old runic script in official documents. And..." At that point, their compartment door was kicked open and one blond dandy escorted by a pair of gorillas came in.

"So this is where you holed up, Campbell? In a den of badgers? And I thought you could sink no lower." Draco Malfoy sneered and Crabbe and Goyle roared in laughter.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, Malfoy." Valeria said with a smirk while covertly taking her wand in a firmer grip. "Didn't our esteemed Founder cooperate with Helga Hufflepuff in the making of our school? If Salazar Slytherin himself saw Hufflepuff as his equal, who are you to treat her House as inferior?"

"Why you..." Draco started his usual line of idiotic insults but then stopped. "You know what? Forget it. You-Know-Who's followers will get you soon enough. One pureblood scion not yet finished with school hunts down mudbloods and nearly a dozen are taken out, you among them. What do you think will happen with ten experienced adults after you? Personally, I'm hoping for deaths this time." Vicious, aggressive, and not entirely stupid. Malfoy had a point; all she had to do was look at the Hufflepuffs in the compartment to see how upset the average student - the average wizard - was at the situation. None of the others would look Malfoy in the eyes except for Susan, who had a positively murderous expression on her face and was a split-second from raising her wand and blasting the three idiots. Curious reaction for a Hufflepuff, much like Neville's. Had her family become a target during the last war? Better diffuse the situation.

"I'm afraid I don't know who, Malfoy." She replied airily. "Do you mean the Dark Wanker?" Despite the seriousness of the situation that forced a brief laugh out of Ernie, proving the nickname successful in its primary goal. The public would not fear someone who'd become a laughingstock in the media, even if the initial source was anonymous. "Because if you are, well, what kind of idiot would follow such a failure? Taken out by a baby of all things. Not to mention being reduced to a wraith that a couple of schoolchildren beat, as I reminded your Father the last time we met. These guys you're threatening me with? I've met their boss. Wasn't too impressed either." Contrary to her expectations though, the blonde dandy was not enraged by her words this time.

"Keep it up, Campbell. You do know Dumbledore's efforts were blocked, don't you?" He sneered. "The old man wasn't subtle enough, see. And one of these days, your parents might be -briefly- entertaining visitors. You can ask Bones over there what that's like."

"Why you little..." Susan all but leapt from her seat and it was all Hannah and Ernie could do to hold her back. Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle looked on with amusement. Forget about diffusing the situation.

"You know Malfoy, I find your lack of faith disturbing." She moved her right hand as if picking up a small object. Despite long hours of practice over the Summer, the effort she had to put into it was anything but small but as it was purely mental, there wasn't any physical evidence. Lifting up Malfoy off his feet with an invisible grip on his neck was very satisfying, too. "The way you posture and threaten in the name of others has become annoying too. What have you to say for yourself?"

"Acckhh..."

"Speak up!" She shook him a bit, more to prevent Crabbe or Goyle from launching an attack on their own while she was distracted. Doing this with a wand would have been far easier - but not nearly as impressive. "I can't hear you over the sound of strangling you to death!"

"Umm, Valeria?" Susan said uncertainly. "He's beginning to turn blue. Maybe you should... drop him?"

"Are you sure?" She asked the other girl. The effort of keeping up Malfoy like that begun to press against her mind, the sign of a headache coming due to overexertion. She was so going to practice more as soon as they got to Hogwarts. If she couldn't pull off even a simple levitation, she might as well forget trying to do things wandlessly. Hagrid could do even some human transfiguration with a snapped wand - which was pretty much no wand - and he'd been expelled in his third year.

"I don't want you getting into trouble for the likes of him." Susan nodded at Malfoy, her voice loaded with scorn. Valeria sighed and released the so-called Slytherin prince. Draco fell like a sack of potatoes, too busy sucking in air greedily to notice anything else. Vincent and Gregory wordlessly picked him up and carried him off; unlike their boss, they'd learned not to antagonize their betters. The four Hufflepuffs and lone Slytherin sat there without talking for a good five minutes. The silence was finally interrupted by Zacharias Smith staring at Valeria as if seeing her for the first time and exclaiming.

"That was so cool!"

 **...**

"Hmm, that's a bit early for us to have gotten to Hogsmeade, don't you think?" Cedric said over an hour later. The fifth-year boy had finished his patrol only a few minutes before and the rest of them had been filling him in when the Hogwarts Express slowed down.

"Definitely." Hannah answered. "Terry Boot timed the whole trip last year over a bet with Lisa Turpin and Sue Li. The girls totally won, too." She giggled, but Cedric's serious expression remained. The boy frowned, looked out the window then checked the corridor.

"I don't see anything. Do you think..." The lights went out all at once. Not only in their compartment, but the entire train. There were even screams heard from other compartments, and several people in their own compartment stumbled around for a few seconds in the near-total darkness. Someone even fell into Valeria's lap. She was not amused; the flames that ignited in her right hand and filled the compartment with a flickering red glow danced and sparked with her rising annoyance, dangerously close to bursting outwards in a conflagration. She was even less amused when she saw who it was that had landed on her.

"Honestly Smith, are you a wizard or not?" She said testily. " _Lumos_ is a first-year charm, I'm sure you can manage it." Someone else's wand lit up, soft white radiance illuminating everything. Cedric lifted his wand higher and smiled down at her and a red-faced Zacharias Smith.

"I'm not so sure it was incompetence on his part." The too-handsome boy grinned. "Personally, I believe he landed precisely where he meant to."

Any more witty banter -if it could even be called that- was interrupted by the sound of the train's outer doors banging open then closed, where someone must have just boarded the train. Cedric frowned. His Wand-Lighting Charm was behaving oddly, flickering like an old electric lamp about to burn out. After a few moments it faded entirely, and darkness pressed heavily against them as if it were a live thing, only held back by the flames. The windows iced over with a crackling sound and Valeria could have sworn she heard screams, every other sound smothered by the obviously unnatural gloom. And then a black-robed figure entered their compartment.

Ten feet tall if it was an inch, it had to bend down to avoid its head smashing into the ceiling. Its thick robes hung low over its head, hands, and feet, concealing them from sight and the sense of dread most everyone felt in any dangerous and unexpected but unknown situation magnified a hundredfold at its appearance. And then it took in a slow, heavy, rattling breath and Susan paled. Hands and feet shaking, the previously confident girl almost collapsed on her seat. The others took several steps back -even Cedric- and the screaming in Valeria's ears intensified. What the hell? Who'd called in the Nazgul?

As the black-robed figure entered their compartment fully, an image began to form in Valeria's mind and the scource of the screams was revealed. A little girl, alone in the woods, her hands on fire. Phantom pains, echoes of remembered horror rose up to the forefront of her thoughts as soon as she recognized the girl as her younger self, the memory as that of one of her first intentional uses of magic going horribly wrong. Then the rage followed. Rage was an old companion, never forgotten. Rage at the world for all that pain, that led to a major forest fire. Rage at herself for her failure, repeated attempts at controlling her power following, not all of them without more scars. Irrational rage at her currently absent friends, for not being with her this day, for helping her get rid of the scars over a year ago. And rage at the creature for daring to force her to relieve all that. Darkness churned as fear and pain and rage warred, and Valeria lashed out not quite blindly. She fed her emotions into the fire, just like in the memory the black-robed creature had brought up from the depths of her mind.

Black robes disintegrated. The creature was slammed back, the flames surrounding it eating through the compartment door as if it weren't there. Its back touched the far side of the carriage and glass and metal hissed and bubbled. And then the creature stopped falling back. Slowly, oh so slowly, it glided forth, a halo of fire surrounding it. One foot... two feet... now Valeria could clearly see the horror once hidden under those robes. Three, four, it had re-entered the compartment and the stabs of pain on both her hands and mind became almost unbearable. Five, six, it loomed above, is presence smothering her senses and hammering against her thoughts.

The last thing she saw before being overwhelmed by the darkness was a bright silver light entering the wrecked compartment...


	48. I mark the hours, every one

**Urazz: Those little pop-culture references are an excellent way in giving color to someone's personality. Strange that nobody caught the James Bond one, though.**

 **a1993: It was less the magical world's attitude towards him IMHO than it was the Dursley's influence. Harry was indoctrinated from a very young age not to make friends, not to try for better grades, to be totally reliant on himself, that everything was his fault, and so on and so forth. The physical and emotional harm caused by his childhood was far less than the mental one.**

 **Guest: interactions with other Houses are coming up. While not an introvert like Harry, Valeria is a huge overachiever and doesn't have that much time left for making friends. Luckily, interactions with the few friends she has are slowly changing her.**

 **ro781727: Yep, that's exactly it. Valeria's desire to succeed by all means was intensified by that experience and a couple of others. It is one of the reasons she grew different than Hermione in canon, the other being her family.**

 **PeliusAnar: Even full Fiendfyre can't physically harm dementors. Heat and light make them uncomfortable and, in extreme cases, might cause them to flee but it can't truly hurt them. They're Non-beings, meaning they are manifestations of some force or aspect of magic, not actual creatures. They're similar to Peeves in that nobody has found a way to get rid of them without getting rid of the source of their existence. (In Peeves' case, destroying Hogwarts would do it.)**

 **Biabara: Dementors are a whole lot worse than Nazgul, though. They can't be harmed, they can ignore impediments based on terrain, and they can devour your soul, ensuring you never get an afterlife as long as the dementor that ate it exists, beyond your eternal torment inside said dementor.**

 **Ariaelune: There are extenuating circumstances. For one thing, Valeria has a loving family and the only really ugly experiences she's had involved more anger than terror. For another, there are certain aspects of Dementors that will be explored in this book that should be interesting.**

 **BizarreBard: Thanks!**

 **DaughterofTerpsichore: Thanks!**

 **Guest: Not just a quote - she actually Vadered Malfoy.**

 **Disclaimer: Oh bummer, I'm not JK Rowling; there go my dreams of an expensive new indoor pool. OTOH, I can write fanfiction of her great works for fun and homage without having to worry about editors and deadlines - mostly.**

 **...**

"Attacking a Dementor was exceedingly foolish of you, Miss Campbell."

Waking up in the infirmary with Professor Snape looming over her. Joy. Valeria groaned and looked around. Luckily, nobody else had been wounded by her lashing out with a torrent of fire in an enclosed space without a care in the world. The only other patient in evidence was Harry who looked as pale, exhausted, and clammy as she felt herself. It made sense; if those things - whatever they were - could make you relieve the worst experiences of your life... Harry had far more of those than she did and with his tendency to take any blame on his shoulders, he might be badly affected. The thirty-something man with the threadbare robes from the train was talking to him now, trying to cheer him up with a sizable bar of chocolate. Valeria wished him luck; her attempts to cheer up Harry after something went disastrously wrong fell flat far more often than not.

"Has your miniscule, thirteen-year-old-girl's ability to pay attention been badly affected by the Dementor, Miss Campbell?" Professor Snape interrupted her thoughts with one of his usual snide remarks. "Madam Pomfrey gave you a clean bill of health, to her surprise. Are your faculties addled in some new way her medical scans missed, perhaps?"

"No sir." She frowned, deep in thought. Now that she went over them from the relative safety of Hogwarts, recent events did not make sense. "I was merely wondering whose adult's faculties are addled. Our safety usually is the previous generation's responsibility, and having the Hogwarts Express invaded by terror-inducing wraiths... that counts as a monumental failure in my book. Not to mention it must have been sanctioned by someone with high authority but little sense for the Express to stop and practically invite the things in, as it did."

"Cheeky brat." She could have sworn she saw the barest hint of affection in her Head of House's succint retort. "You are essentially correct. After the recent mass breakout from Azkaban the Ministry has, in its infinite wisdom," the Potion-Master's sneer indicated what he thought of said 'wisdom' "...decided that a contingent of the guards of Azkaban will be posted around Hogwarts as an extra layer of security."

"How is that going to help?" The blonde Slytherin witch asked incredulously. "They didn't stop the escape in the first place!"

"That is irrelevant in the current situation." Professor Snape said in a warning tone. "The Dementors are here and we have to deal with them. Since you missed the Headmaster's less than informative speech, filling you in falls to me as your Head of House." He scowled. Valeria couldn't tell if it was directed at her or not - Professor Snape was one of the few people she couldn't read with any accuracy. "Dementors are some of the darker creatures of our world. They can perceive one's emotional and mental state, and rapidly degrade it by presence alone. As such, concealment, disguises, even outright invisibility are useless against them. It is in their nature to gleefully take advantage of any excuse to get their hands on another victim to feed on so I suggest you and your friends avoid giving them the opportunity. Last but not least they are, as you've seen, entirely immune to harm of any kind and invulnerable to the vast majority of magical effects. Picking a fight with them is monumentally stupid at best, a fate worse than death at worst."

"I can see it now." She said scathingly. "This school year is going to be awesome."

"That's reality for you, Miss Campbell. You either adapt to it, or change it. Anything else leads to extinction." Professor Snape turned to leave. "Meet me in my office once you're discharged. There is a private matter we need to discuss."

 **...**

"Hey Val!" Harry called as soon as his own adult chaperone had left. "Exciting trip, huh?"

"I'd take a flying car over a wraith invasion, thank you very much." She said as he walked up to her bed, still munching on his huge bar of chocolate.

"It was horrible." Harry said with a shudder. "Felt as if I'd never be happy again. I even saw... nevermind." He broke a large piece of chocolate off his bar and offered it to her. "Want some? Professor Lupin says it helps with recovery - and he's right. He's our new Defense against the Dark Arts teacher and he's awesome!"

"Really?" She asked as she accepted the offer and bit down. Why would Harry of all people speak so highly of a Defense teacher he'd just met? His chocolate-as-medicine idea at least had been a bust; Valeria felt little difference.

"Oh yes! When the Dementors attacked he chased them away with a silver light out of his wand!" He smiled widely. "I missed it the first time as I... err... I'd been knocked out. I did see it though when there was a terrible roaring explosion thing from the carriage ahead and the other Dementors went berserk."

"He chased the Dementors away?" Valeria silently vowed to learn that spell as soon as possible. Whatever it took - sucking up to said Professor, blackmail, potions and compulsions - she would learn it. And then those nasty wraiths would see how she repaid those that attacked her.

"Yeah, and he seemed friendly and funny. Even joked about having poisoned the chocolate." Yes, because that was really funny - since when did Harry have a skewed sense of humor? Maybe she should introduce him to the Terror Twins and their wondrous love-potion-filled chocolate.

"Do you think he'd teach us? The spell he used against the Dementors, I mean."

"Why?" Harry asked with some apprehension. "Do you think they'll attack again?"

"Let's put it this way." Some smiles show mirth. Hers just showed teeth. "In the two years we've been in Hogwarts so far, when did a potentially lethal situation fail to involve us in some way?" Harry wasn't stupid. He only needed a small prod to see most things, and that was due to all the damage his so-called family had done to his self-confidence over the years.

"You think I should ask him?"

"Better if the famous Boy-Who-Lived did it. I'm a Slytherin and a mudblood." He winced but nodded.

"It's like with Minister Fudge, right?" He suddenly grew angry. "They'll listen to me for something I don't even remember doing, for something that might have been an accident, when you or Daphne are so much better at, well, everything!"

"I doubt that's true, Harry." Daphne huh? She'd better warn the other blonde of the direction things might be going. If she didn't... Facing the best duelist in their year in a real fight did not seem like a good idea for some reason. "If you applied yourself to every lesson half as much as you did to Quidditch, you'd leave the majority of our fellow third years in the dust."

 **...**

"Come in, Miss Campbell." Her Head of House said before she could knock. "The door is unlocked."

One day, she'd find out how he and the Headmaster were aware of her presence like that. Some kind of alarm or detection spell, perhaps? And then she'd pull off the same trick to other students - maybe the Terror Twins? Alas, that day was still far in the future. She opened the door and went in.

Professor Snape's office was much as she remembered it from her last visit. His collection of pickled potion ingredients of high rarity and unpleasant appearrance had grown by a dozen or so specimens, a few more unusual books in what she recognized as various Runic scripts were in his shelves, but all in all it had the same aura of mystery and foreboding. The Professor himself sat behind his desk, a large piece of parchment in his hands. Curious.

"Sit down, Miss Campbell. There are a few things about your schedule we need to discuss." He conjured a simple wooden chair with a flick of his wand, then flicked it a few more times to no visible effect. In the magical spectrum though, which she could see thanks to the Magic-Revealing Charm she'd cast before entering, things were more interesting. Her normally invisible Shield Charm appeared as a thin bluish layer around her. A much stronger blue shone the enchantments on both the entrance itself and the door leading to the ingredients cabinet, as well as most of the specimen jars and tomes on the shelves. The conjured chair was a dull brown-red and the air around the Professor's desk had become a pale yellow at his latest casting.

"A selective area silencing charm, sir? Never heard of one before." After spending nearly a year trying to decipher the enchantments on Riddle's Diary, her skill in revealing and identifying magic had improved considerably. Compared to those spells, what most wizards cast in their day-to-day affairs seemed crude and simplistic in comparison. Not so, Professor Snape's. This tricky silencer he'd just cast was both subtle and complex, and she couldn't wait to examine the spell he used to put their potions instructions on the board. Tracey believed he simply wrote them in advance then hid them behind a concealment charm but she wasn't so sure.

"My own invention, Miss Campbell. But that is neither here or there." He pointed at the sheet of parchment he'd been examining. "This is a binding magical contract. Your decision to pursue the limits of what Hogwarts can offer in terms of education warrants its use."

"Indeed?" She had not noticed anything about it mentioned in the Hogwarts charter and the scant references she'd found about the 'special dispensation' that would help in her studies. Since they didn't even elaborate on the nature of such dispensation though...

"Oh yes. The method provided by the ministry in this case is quite powerful. I will not see it abused in spreading mayhem by any student in my House." He scowled. "The Headmaster might believe a simple promise to be enough but I am not nearly so lenient. You will sign this contract before any special... help is granted." What could have Professor Snape uneasy enough for the signs to be visible to her? Not even the presence of Dementors had worried him so. Frowning, she read the contract. It was both straightforward and thorough.

 _1) The device granted by the ministry is only to be used for my studies. No other use is allowed, except as last resort in defense of my life or the life of another._

 _2) I will not use the device beyond the borders of Hogwarts and its grounds._

 _3) I will share the device's existence with none that are not already aware of it and will do my best in keeping it concealed, except as last resort in defense of my life or the life of another._

 _4) The device is granted to me and I am responsible for it. I will report all irregularities, damages, or loss associated with its use to my Head of House or the Headmaster at the earliest opportunity._

 _5) I will report to my Head of House or the Headmaster once a month for a checkup associated with the device's use to ensure my personal health, physical, mental or magical._

Interesting. Such an agreement prior to being given use of an artifact indicated it was very powerful, very dangerous, or both. Given the wording she was no reason for not signing, except for the lack of penalties given for breaking the agreement. Since this was a magical contract though, better to examine it in more than physical means. A devious wizard could do much to ensnare another through contracts. Even the most common trick, to have secret clauses written in invisible ink so a careless signee would agree to them without reading them, could be devastating.

 _"Specialis Revelio!"_

Casting the Magic-Revealing Charm directly on the parchment only warranted a raised eyebrow and a satisfied smirk from her Head of House. It made sense; Professor Snape was the Head of Slytherin. One of his students falling in an obvious trap could be seen as his personal failure. Their using an advanced spell successfully to avoid said trap would be something the House would be proud of instead. So she examined the parchment carefully for over twenty minutes, not stopping until she was certain she'd either discovered all the enchantments upon it, or further spells were beyond her ability to reveal.

"So, if I break this contract a Disfiguring Curse would warp my hands until I could no longer use a wand - or anything else requiring manual dexterity for that matter, a powerful Compulsion would attempt to force me to reveal my misdeeds, another Compulsion would attempt to have me speak only the truth, and a Locator Charm would reveal my location to whoever held the broken contract." She pointed at the contract itself. "And since I would willingly sign it, I'd be gining my permission for those spells to directly affect me through my defenses."

"Excellent analysis, Miss Campbell; twenty points to Slytherin." Professor Snape handed her a quill with a challenging smirk. "Now, do you wish to sign, or not?"

She did, without second thoughts. Learning all she could about magic came before almost anything else - it was certainly more important than any minor inconveniences. Her Head of House took the signed contract, folded it, and hid it in a pocket. From that same pocket, he retrieved a strange amulet. It had a very long chain of what looked like white gold, with the amulet itself being a tiny gyroscope with a hourglass in its center. Upon it was written in a tiny, elaborate script a short rhyme;

" _I mark the hours, every one,_

 _Nor have I yet outrun the Sun._

 _My use and value, unto you,_

 _Are gauged by what you have to do._ "

"This, Miss Campbell," said Professor Snape in an unusually reverent tone "...is a Time-Turner."


	49. Wrinkles and Stitches

**My apologies, everyone. This chapter should have been up days ago. It should also have been longer. Unfortunately, I forgot to save a copy and the reccuring glitches and errors on the site in the past few days ate it when I tried to post. I'm still rewriting the parts about the elective classes.**

 **a1993: Chocolate helps if you're affected by magical despair. Harry wasn't about to admit he'd fainted; boys and Gryffindors are weird like that.**

 **Urazz: Yes, Snape is a prodigy in some subjects. Inventing spells and potions is not easy, especially when you're still a student. Tom Riddle, Hermione, and the Weasley Twins are the only other students we know of to have managed it. As for Valeria and Lupin, you have to wait and see.**

 **ro781727: I don't think Remus Lupin was ever consciously biased. Emphasis on consciously.**

 **Slytherin's Strumpet: Dementors leave you with the worst memories of your life. Those aren't always about fear - Sirius Black for example had to relive his guilt at failing to protect his friends, and bear the knowledge that he was innocent. That aside, there are circumstances that can make one less affected by Dementors.**

 **StevenG: Trying to trick your way through a contract or vow you willingly agreed to is a bad idea, as magic works on intent, not only wording. You're thinking about compulsions and bindings, when somebody else forces you to do something. In those cases since your intent was never to agree to them in the first place, you can use mental gymnastics to lawyer your way through them. Luckily, Valeria always saw her studies as more than the basic lessons - she didn't have to mentally justify it. As for protecting herself against Legilimency the protection wasn't undetectable; if it had been, Dumbledore and Snape would definitely want it for their espionage games.**

 **Disclaimer: Multiple instances of the Professors helping the students directly with their problems? Obviously I am not JK Rowling and I got no rights on Harry Potter**

 **...**

The sudden, electrical-seeming jolt through her torso and limbs dragged Valeria from deep sleep to full wakefulness in a quarter-second flat. Around and above her there was only darkness, the walls of her cell only a foot or so wider apart than her own shoulders, and neither windows nor door in evidence. The air was unpleasantly warm and stale, and smelled of old boots, and the available space would have made for cramped sleeping conditions for a typical adult. The Slytherin witch was only a teenager however, and a short one at that; her accomodations were adequate, if barely. With a heavy sigh, she lit her wand to reveal a room barely six feet by three, bedsheets, pillow and a ladder the only items inside. Sleeping inside one's own magically extended trunk: glamorous, it was not.

Despite the discomfort and occasional doubts about her sanity after making the decision of using it, Valeria was glad for said trunk's existence. Having a secure and secret place to stay where almost nobody could find her was the only way she could get so many hours of extra sleep, let alone reading and experimenting. The one huge problem use of a Time-Turner had was how to prevent nearly six hundred teenagers, none of whom were blind, from noticing one was in two places at the same time. The first solution was to use it as little as possible; just go to the classes that had clashing schedules and use a secrecy charm to deflect notice from this one fact. Given that no other students would observe the discrepancy directly, the secrecy charm would steer them subconsciously away from working it out. Only an hour into thinking about it though, Valeria had decided to go for option two; using the Time-Turner the maximum possible amount each day, then making sure nobody could be in a position to notice it.

A first day full of excitement, five reversals of time, and thirty-eight hours of activity later, she'd stumbled into her bed and collapsed till the next evening. Luckily, few students would waste their last sunday before lessons started to laugh at one silly third-year working herself to unconsciousness. Lesson learned: to survive doubling her days, she also needed to double her sleep hours and calorie intake. Sunday evening had been spent planning, her worry about her absent friends temporarily taking a back seat. The magical contract was the third big problem. Magical vows and binding contracts worked, like all magic, on intent. There was both letter and spirit in their meaning and trying to follow the former while breaking the latter resulted in the kind of backlash that made Unbreakable Vows so rare despite their being so useful. Trying any shenanigans she knew, in her own mind, would be against the spirit of the agreement could trigger the penalties; powerful magic cared as much about clever wordplay as gravity. Luckily, she'd always seen her studies as being far more than just the lessons in the Ministry-approved curricullum.

It was now late Sunday night and the first successful test of her plan was complete. A sleeping potion they'd been taught in first-year Potions provided easy and quick access to sleep on demand; enchanting a ring with the Reviving Spell made sure she'd wake up at the desired time. Those two along with her enchanted trunk allowed her to set up three five-hour periods of sleep evenly spaced in her forty-eight-hour day with no time lost in adjusting to an altered schedule. Since many activities would not be doubled - she'd have to take extra food with her as meals was one such - the Time-Turner actually allowed her three to four times the hours she'd normally have available for her own projects and research.

Napoleon was right; time was the greatest resource of all and magic would afford her more than she'd ever thought possible.

 **...**

"Hey Val, wait up!" It was Monday morning and Daphne and Tracey had finally turned up. In fact they'd been trying to talk to her for a good half-hour.

"Uhuh. Why exactly should I, Tracey?" She sat in her usual place at the Slytherin table for breakfast, the other members of her House slowly trickling in. "My best friends up and vanish for no apparent reason and the first time I learn of it is when they reappear." She forced herself to eat her eggs and bacon despite the food suddenly tasting like ashes. With a few flicks of her wand she turned several muffins into tiny beads, put them in a pocket, then drank half her glass of applejuice in one go.

"Look, Valeria," Daphne started awkwardly, falling back to perfect but impersonal manners as she always did when uncomfortable. "When our parents learned of the Dementors, they held us back. Tracey was a guest in our house at the time and her family readily followed our parents' example. We'd have been there with you if we could have." She frowned. "If only to keep you away from trouble." She added under her breath.

"Are you using the royal 'we' now?" She asked snidely. Maybe it was an aftereffect of her encounter with emotion-stealing demons, maybe adjusting to her new schedule was making her irritable, or perhaps she just felt arbitrarily contrary. Whatever the case, she wasn't feeling particularly forgiving at the moment. "Way to enhance your Ice Queen reputation, your blondeness."

"She's got you there, Daph." One of the new firsties cackled while a couple of their Housemates sniggered. She was a lithe girl, tall and of uncommonly good looks for her age, with long, straight black hair that didn't quite fit her alabaster complexion and gleaming green-brown eyes. Wait, was she... "Tory, pleased to meet you!" The girl said, offering to shake hands in blatant disregard of propriety and tradition. "Anyone who can get my big sister's knickers in a twist is OK in my book."

"Astoria!" Daphne sighed in exasperation. "Are you trying to see how many of our customs you can trample in under five minutes, again?"

"Why yes. Yes I am." The younger girl replied cheerfully before turning back to Valeria. "What dear old sis has been failing to say is that mom and dad decreed we wouldn't be riding on the Hogwarts Express because of me." She puffed up in a mockery of aristocratic dignity while making her voice as high-pitched as it would go. "Poor baby Astoria! A five-minute tango with the guards of Azkaban would be too much for her so let's break seven generations of tradition and send her by Floo. It couldn't possibly hurt her standing with her peers, could it? Why, starting her carreer in Slytherin like that would totally endear her to the rest of the old family scions."

"Wow, the littlest Greengrass has claws." Draco Malfoy said as he stared at them speculatively. Quite a few of their classmates followed his example openly or covertly; their little spat had drawn quite a bit of attention. "Astoria, was it? Why don't you join our end of the table? The one you're sitting on has more than its share of undesirables."

"Thank you scion Malfoy, but I must decline. Distancing oneself from one's family is simply not done." The serious demeanor was short-lived in Astoria's face. She smiled widely before quipping "Besides, needling my prim and proper bigger sis is so much fun."

"Hey, Daphne?" Tracey said as 'Tory' turned her attention to her yearmates.

"What is it?" the tall blonde replied with a dejected sigh.

"You, like many other unfortunates before you, have a younger sibling in Hogwarts now." Tracey said solemnly. "My condolences."

 **...**

Third-year Charms was becoming more interesting. While the first and second years had focused on individual effects, Professor Flitwick said, this year they would be studying spells as groups. In addition to delving into the magical theory governing such groups, they would also be learning to produce effects less straightforward and easy to grasp intuitively than they had so far. Temperature control charms instead of simple Fire-Making. Creating lights of variable intensity and nature. Applying variable and controlled force through the Seize and Pull Charm rather than levitation. Altering nonphysical qualities such as emotions; Cheering Charms sounded, rather appropriately, quite fun. Self-study might have allowed Valeria to learn spells beyond her year - she could already apply force through intent rather than specific targeting via Summoning and Banishing charms for example - but there were always important parts of theory that weren't included in the books. Since Flitwick was both a Charms Master and a Dueling Champion, the Professor's perspective and insight was invaluable. Of course, there were other reasons she saw the diminutive part-goblin as one of the more likable faculty members.

"Miss Campbell, a moment of your time please." He said as that day's lesson came to an end.

"Professor?" She had nothing against Professor Flitwick but past events had cultivated her paranoia. She quickly cast both Magic-Revealing and Presence-Revealing charms to ensure there wasn't anything fishy going on during her private conversation with her Professor. Since the classroom was confirmed empty and not booby-trapped, the only potential source of danger would be the Charms Master and Dueling Champion himself; nothing she could do about that.

"Impressive magic for your age." He commended her. "I see you have no power problems. How about your control, though? Have you had any other... incidents lately?"

"Is this about the train?" She groaned. "In my defense, there were extenuating circumstances. Tall, floating, ugly, soul-sucking ones at that."

"You did nothing wrong young lady, so stop blaming yourself." The tiny wizard said sharply. He was wrong though. "I am merely asking as the Professor of one of your more magically intensive classes, as well as out of personal concern. I still recall the young student that scorched her desk in her first year, you know."

"I... there are still some issues with my control." She admitted. "Every time I push myself, something bad usually happens. Sometimes the bigger spells seem to have a will of their own, you know?"

"Immaturity." The diminutive Professor said, not unkindly. Seeing her stricken expression, he explained. "You're thirteen, miss Campbell. Much as young people like to believe yourselves all grown up, physically and mentally you aren't. Emotions do affect you more than us older folk and your intent is less focused than it could be."

"Great." She tried not to prove him immediately correct by throwing a typical teenager's tantrum but it was hard. "Every time I cast a big spell there's always a chance I'll snap and set the closest inbred idiot on fire, is that what you're saying?"

"It is certainly a problem." He agreed. "Professor Lupin had to patch your carriage with some conjuration, you know. Repair charms failed to restore the damage. Imagine if that had been Mister Malfoy instead of wood and metal; we couldn't just conjure him new skin and limbs."

"I see..." She kind of did, no matter how inviting the idea of a horribly burned Draco Malfoy seemed. There was only one spell that destroyed things beyond magical repair and casting it by accident, however remote the possibility, was a scary proposition. She was quite lucky she didn't have the power to cast more than a pale imitation back then; had she managed it, she'd probably have killed everyone on the Hogwarts Express. "I guess I have to stay away from the bigger spells, huh?"

"You misunderstand, Miss Campbell." The Charms master said and smiled up at her. "What you lack is experience. Being who I am, it would be rather criminal of me not to help you attain it."

"Professor?"

"Detention, Miss Campbell. One hour every day with me, in the abandoned Transfiguration classroom on the fourth floor. Bring only your wand and don't worry. Nobody ever managed to get through one of my defensive enchantments, when I was given enough time to set it properly."


	50. New and Old

**Sorry for the delay, everyone. Got caught up getting my other story started. Posting will pick up normally again now.**

 **sanbeegoldiewhitey: Can't please everyone. Maybe you'd like my new story better: that one doesn't have an fully original characters.**

 **Slytherin's Strumpet: Of course he was under-utilized! He's a half-goblin dueling champion with enough power behind his Charms to hold back an entire army of Death Eaters, Snatchers, and Dark Creatures, until Voldemort himself takes action. In the books, he's the one to raise defensive enchantments around Hogwarts and I wanted to explore him a bit more.**

 **ro781727: I'm afraid Valeria will keep blowing things up if she isn't focused. She might learn to aim the explosions on deserving targets though!**

 **Urazz: Yep, Astoria is cute. Also, dyes her hair. Flitwick gave the lessons as 'detentions' so that nobody would question what Valeria was doing, or try to stop it. The only ones who can interfere now are Snape and Dumbledore.**

 **lightning king: Charms are a subject Valeria is uncommonly gifted in, but not all wizards are the same. Remember, to get to NEWT-level for any subject you need an 'exceeds expectations' mark in your OWLs. Say about 1/2 of the students manage that for each subject. This means about 1/4 manage that for both Defense and Charms. Now, consider how many of those who are good in both are talented enough to jump to the next level - that of an Auror or powerful Death Eater. Furthermore, practice and experience play a huge role too; unless you practice hard for hours every day, you won't be good enough in a large variety of spells to use in a fight. There's a huge difference between casting a spell with 2-3 seconds of concentration in a safe situation and casting it reflexively in battle and many wizards simply choose to only focus in few useful spells to take them to that level. As for magic resistance, wizards are innately tougher physically than muggles - they would never have survived Quidditch if they weren't (a bludger weighs over 100 pounds and moves at over 100 miles/hour). But to be magically resistant, they have to work at it. They can use defensive spells, drink potions, or consume substances or go through rituals that permanently enhance their defenses. Repeated exposure to the same kind of attack can build a resistance as well. But, as with everything else, it takes a lot of effort not everyone is willing (or able) to put in.**

 **a1993: Flitwick is very happy to have found someone so talented in Charms, yes.**

 **PeliusAnar: Dementors 'grow like fungi'. As they're Nonbeings like Poltergeists, they aren't actually alive. They're spawned when specific emotions are charged with enough magic. For Poltergeists it is the chaotic personalities of enough children residing in one building - for Dementors it is a sufficiently high level of fear being prevalent for sufficiently long times. Dementors fade (they don't die as they aren't alive) when the source of their existence is removed - the same thing that would happen to peeves if Hogwarts were to be destroyed.**

 **Disclaimer: This story is free and written only for fun, and JK Rowling still holds all rights to Harry Potter - which explains my bank account's balance. :) This chapter uses several lines from the original Prisoner of Azkaban chapter 6, "talons and teal leaves", as the same scene takes place.**

 **...**

"Good morning class. My name is Septima Vector and I'll be your Professor for the Arithmancy elective." The tall, thirty-something redhead witch had the same no-nonsense demeanor as Professor McGonagal outwardly, but there was the barest hint of humor in her eyes and a tiny smirk on her lips. "Arithmancy is one of the least understood disciplines of magic in the wider wizarding world. It is also one of the oldest - as old as Herbology or Astronomy, and far older than wand-based magic." She paused as some of the students stared incredulously at each other and whispers filled the predominantly Slytherin and Ravenclaw student group. "In fact, let's prove how misunderstood the discipline is through a simple test. What do you think Arithmancy is about? Come on, speak up, you won't be marked down for an incorrect answer this time."

Several people tentatively raised hands but Professor Vector pointed at the tall platinum-blonde in green and silver. "Miss Greengrass?"

"It is how Pureblood families give appropriate names to their children." Daphne said confidently.

"Interesting." The older witch muttered. "How about you, Mister Boot?"

"It is used in spell-crafting, Professor. The making of new spells." The Ravenclaw boy announced with anticipation. He obviously couldn't wait to try his hand in making a new spell.

"I see... Miss Roper?"

"Predicting the future?" The only Gryffindor to attend the elective suggested. Strangely enough the majority of Gryffindor House had chosen Divination instead, a class that took place at the same hours as this one. Except for Valeria, no student had taken both Arithmancy and Divination - which should make the Divination lessons interesting.

"How about you, Mister Nott?"

"Err... studying the magical properties of numbers." Answered the normally silent Slytherin. "I think."

"As I expected." Professor Vector nodded. "You all mentioned things the average wizard believes Arithmancy is about, without touching on the core idea of this branch of magic." More whispers. Valeria had elected to remain silent. Having both read ahead beyond this year's curriculum and benefiting from the tutelage of a certain Dark wizard in a Diary, she knew what the redheaded Arithmancer was hinting at. Sometimes though, listening in silence could be more advantageous - or less _dis_ advantageous - than speaking and revealing one's superiority to one's peers.

"Arithmancy as a branch of magic is the correlation of concepts and meanings we ascribe to numbers with coincidences in all phenomena, arcane or mundane." Their Professor smiled a bit at her mostly confused class. "Numbers don't have properties. They reflect preexisting realities they were invented to measure; our ten fingers have existed long before the number ten after all. Also, they don't predict the future because they're numbers. Mathematics were influenced in their creation by the needs, culture, and circumstances of their creators; as such, the entire concept has been infused by the magic of a thousand generations, each member of each generation repeating by rote - almost ritualistically one could say - the same calculations countless times over their lifetime. The tremendous amount of intent that implies - magical or muggle - actually creates coincidences where magic is concerned. By applying mathematics and numerology, one can predict such seemingly random influences. Last but not least, Arithmancy is not used in making spells per se. It is used to predict or evaluate how the ritualized aspects of a spell might work, or interact with each other. In wand-based magic, this is usually how many letters and what tone an incantation should have or what wand-gestures should be made to better channel the intent of the caster into the spell, or to predict interactions between multiple spells. At a deeper level, it is used to match wands of certain length, thickness, wood, core material, and rigidity with witches and wizards of specific personalities and talents for better results. Ultimately, a sufficiently strong wizard that is sufficiently talented in the given spell has no need of incantation, gestures, or even wand. The arithmantically correct use of foci, gestures, and incantations merely allows less able spellcasters to succeed where otherwise they would not have, thus allowing wizard-kind to learn a broader array of spells more easily."

By that point in Professor Vector's lecture the entire class, Valeria included, were gobsmacked. That explanation of Arithmancy was not one they'd encountered before and was certainly more complex than they had expected. While superficially simple, the concepts introduced had far-reaching implications. No wonder the Wizarding World put so much emphasis into dates, seasonal holidays, naming and numbering traditions that appeared absolutely meaningless to outsiders. If a series of numbers could not only predict the future but actually influence events...

The young Slytherin witch focused all her attention on their instructor, determined not to miss a single word of such an important lesson.

 **...**

Their Potions class had advanced considerably since their second year. They were going to brew the Shrinking Solution, a rather useful and fairly powerful potion that, if used incorrectly, could cause untold chaos. Valeria had been using Shrinking and Enlarging Charms for some time now, but this potion's potential effects were more flexible and more far-reaching than the equivalent Charm. For one thing, depending on how it was administered, it could turn living creatures to younger forms, not just smaller. For another, it not as easily detectable and lasted longer. Last but certainly not least it had potential as a weapon, given how its effects propagated when mixed with other liquids. A wizard in ancient times had poured some of it down a well and a village's entire population had been shrunk. The same could be done to Hogwarts castle for example, or a muggle city - hence the potential for untold chaos. Frankly, the Slytherin witch was surprised Professor Snape actually taught children how to brew it. Then again, had they not been taught the Forgetfulness Potion back in their first year, and wouldn't they be taught about poisons that resisted mundane or even magical detection later this year?

The lesson itself was not very challenging to the overachieving witch, though it became interesting enough when the Potions Master tested Neville's, Harry's, and Ron's potions. All of them worked correctly if not very efficiently, even Ron's brew. Apparently, their little bet from their previous year had convinced the Gryffindor redhead to work harder. On the other hand, Daphne was having problems. As brilliant as she was proving to be in their Arithmancy class, she only managed an average work in potions. It had always been the other blonde's weakest subject and Valeria had finally decided to ask why.

"I've never cooked anything in my entire life, Val." The other girl said in exasperation in their impromptu meeting after class.

"Potions are not cooking!" Valeria said scandalized. Honestly, was she the only one to notice they were actually a form of ritual magic? They had the same element of sacrifice as many Dark Arts - they used materials from creatures of often above-animal intelligence, for Merlin's sake.

"True. But some of the basic skills carry over." The pureblood princess shook her head. "I sometimes hesitate, worried I'll get a nasty burn or worse. Stupid, isn't it? What with us wearing dragonhide gloves and everything."

"Irrational, not stupid." She smiled encouragingly to her friend. "All fears are, and can only be overcome through effort. Maybe you should partner with Neville? He used to have the same problem, but totally got over it since last year. You should have seen his work over the Summer."

"Don't give me your two-knut muggle rhetoric!" She huffed. "I doubt Neville's changing attitude has anything to do with more 'effort'."

"Do you know something I don't?" The muggleborn Slytherin asked, confused.

"About the wizarding world? Whole libraries' worth of information, Campbell. How I grew up gave me an advantage there, much as it caused this problem I have with potions." With that, Valeria's best friend walked away in silence. Perhaps the influences of wizarding tradition went deeper than Valeria had expected. If so however, why did other Slytherins have an above-average skill in potions when her friend did not?

She'd have to look more into this.

 **...**

Care of Magical Creatures was a fairly popular class with both Gryffindor and Slytherin students, if for different reasons. Harry epitomized the Gryffindor ideal of bravery and meeting adversity head-on, and as such had already encountered several extremely dangerous magical creatures. Valeria could easily see the other Gryffindor students picking that elective for similar reasons - except for Neville, who had complimentary interest in Herbology. Tracey on the other hand was a prime example of why Slytherins dealt with dangerous creatures: profit. Her family had business interests in breeding beasts for various purposes, from racing, to security, to rare ingredients, even to illegal beast-fighting tournaments if rumors were to be believed. There were of course a few that would pursue monster-related studies out of... academic interest. Valeria wondered whether Hagrid would be interested in Basilisks. He had his own chickens and the lake had loads of toads; the possibilities of experimentation were near-endless.

Hagrid was waiting for his class at the door of his hut. He stood in his moleskin overcoat, with Fang the boarhound at his heels, looking impatient to start. "C'mon, now, get a move on!" he called, as the class approached. "Got a real treat for yeh today! Great lesson comin' up! Everyone here? Right, follow me!"

Valeria wondered where their first lesson would be taking place and what creature it would be about. Given the gentle giant's fascination with monsters and that he'd raised an Acromantula on his own when he was in his third year, the slytherin witch wondered if they were to delve into the Forbidden Forest. However, Hagrid strolled off around the edge of the trees, and five minutes later, they found themselves outside a kind of paddock. There was nothing in there.

"Everyone gather round the fence here!" he called. "That's it – make sure yeh can see. Now, firs' thing yeh'll want ter do is open yer books –"

"How?" said the drawling voice of Draco Malfoy. Did he even realize how idiotically he acted? Not even the Gryffindors were bold enough to make demands of a Professor in his face - even if said Professor had only been the Gamekeeper last year.

"Eh?" said Hagrid.

"How do we open our books?" Malfoy repeated. Valeria decided to intervene before things deteriorated any further.

"Oh come on, Draco! There are at least five ways to open our fascinating new books." The blonde said sweetly but not falsely. Imprinting the intellect, personality, and instincts of a beast on an inanimate object was a fascinating use of the Mind Arts. She'd been rather excited for the opportunity to analyze both it and the animation charms on the Monster Book of Monsters. "Don't tell me you couldn't find even one of them!"

"Yeah, Malfoy!" Harry backed her up. "All you have to do is stroke it and it relaxes. Me and Neville found that out back in July!"

"Oh, how silly we've all been!" Malfoy sneered. "We should have stroked them! Why didn't we guess!" He glowered at Harry, Neville, and Valeria. "You I get, Campbell; you're such a girly girl. But you, Potter, Longbottom? Isn't _stroking_ a bit too soft for Gryffindors? Way to go, besmirching your own House's reputation!" The boys went beet red as Draco's cronies laughed while Tracey shot him such a murderous look the idiot would have perished on the spot if he'd noticed it. Despite her secretive tendencies, her brunette friend was a great deal girlier than her - and Valeria knew she hadn't bothered with stroking her own copy of the Monster Book of Monsters; she'd cast a Stunner on it instead. Of course, she wasn't the only one to have come up with another solution.

"Oh Draco, the Monster Book of Monsters was sooo cute! I totally loved it, you know?" She said in a dangerously sweet voice. "Couldn't bear to hurt it so I had to find a... nonviolent way to work with it. Here, let me show you!" She threw the textbook towards the idiot and as it left her hands it begun to grow. From a thick but fairly normal (for Hogwarts) tome it doubled in size as it went up, then became as large as a chair as it descended. By the time it landed, it had grown as big as a bed... and then it came to life. Before anyone could react, it had Draco halfway into its papery mouth and was shaking him like a puppy does its favourite toy.

"Good boy!" The enormous Monster Book of Monsters spit Malfoy out and returned to her side to be petted. After a few moments, it shrunk back to its normal size and she picked it up. "As you can see," she said to the gobsmacked Malfoy minions and the rest of the class who was working hard to hold back laughter "bribing the book with an enchantment that will make it a better monster also works."

"Righ' then," said Hagrid, who was beaming at the class, "so … so yeh've got yer books an' … an' … now yeh need the Magical Creatures. Yeah. So I'll go an' get 'em. Hang on …"

"You're going to pay for this, mudblood!" A furious Draco Malfoy said as soon as Hagrid had moved out of earshot. Valeria didn't pay any attention. Someone who couldn't deal with an enchanted book was hardly a dire threat. No matter what talents he might have, Draco would never become a danger as long as he relied on his father and the family wealth instead of his own magic.

 **...**

"Oooooooh!" squealed Lavender Brown, pointing towards the opposite side of the paddock.

Trotting towards them were a dozen of the most bizarre creatures Harry had ever seen. They had the bodies, hind legs and tails of horses, but the front legs, wings and heads of what seemed to be giant eagles, with cruel, steel-coloured beaks and large, brilliantly orange eyes. The talons on their front legs were half a foot long and deadly-looking. Each of the beasts had a thick leather collar around its neck, which was attached to a long chain, and the ends of all of these were held in the vast hands of Hagrid, who came jogging into the paddock behind the creatures. Harry knew what they were from reading ahead: Hippogriffs. Dangerous, but also misunderstood and noble creatures. Just in case though, he copied Val's favorite tactic and precast a Shield Charm on himself. Ron, Neville, and Tracey followed his example.

"Gee up, there!" he roared, shaking the chains and urging the creatures towards the fence where the class stood. Everyone but the five friends drew back slightly as Hagrid reached them and tethered the creatures to the fence.

"Hippogriffs!" Hagrid roared happily, confirming Harry's previous guess. "Beau'iful, aren' they?"

Harry could really appreciate the Hippogriffs' gleaming coats, changing smoothly from feather to hair, each of them a different colour: stormy grey, bronze, a pinkish roan, gleaming chestnut and inky black. Their being half horse half birds wasn't nearly as much of a shock as it could have been before his encounters with the Basilisk, a troll, acromantulas, dementors, and redcaps, and his greater confidence in his skill in Defense after his practice duels with his friends.

"So," said Hagrid, rubbing his hands together and beaming around, "if yeh wan' ter come a bit nearer …"

Fairly safe behind their Shield Charms, the five friends approached slowly.

"Now, firs' thing yeh gotta know abou' Hippogriffs is they're proud," said Hagrid. "Easily offended, Hippogriffs are. Don't never insult one, 'cause it might be the last thing yeh do."

Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle weren't listening; they were too busy glaring at his Slytherin friend's back and Harry had a nasty feeling they were plotting how best to get the drop on her.

"Yeh always wait fer the Hippogriff ter make the firs' move," Hagrid continued. "It's polite, see? Yeh walk towards him, and yeh bow, an' yeh wait. If he bows back, yeh're allowed ter touch him. If he doesn' bow, then get away from him sharpish, 'cause those talons hurt. Right – who wants ter go first?"

"I'll do it!" Harry said boldly, and Hagrid beamed at him. There was an intake of breath from behind him and both Lavender and Parvati whispered, "Oooh, no, Harry, remember your tea leaves!"

"Tea leaves?" Valeria asked in confusion from his left.

"Yeah Trelawney's warning, remember?" Harry said, staring at his friend curiously. "Awesome handling of our batty Professor, by the way. Even she was impressed."

Leaving the girl to mumble to herself about 'loops' and 'feedback' and 'continuum', Harry advanced on the hippogriffs. Hagrid had him working with one charmingly named Buckbeak and after his explanation, Harry managed to gain Buckbeak's approval. It wasn't hard; all he had to do was treat the magnificent creature as Harry himself would have liked to be treated by others, rather than the stupid reactions his fame was responsible for. When Hagrid suggested a brief flight however, he worried for a moment that Trelawney's prediction would come true. When nothing of the sort happened however, Harry returned from the jarring but exciting ride to a class that cheered his name.

Emboldened by Harry's success, the rest of the class climbed cautiously into the paddock. Hagrid untied the Hippogriffs one by one, and soon people were bowing nervously, all over the paddock. Neville stepped repeatedly backwards from his, which didn't seem to want to bend its knees. Ron and Tracey practised on the chestnut, while Harry watched the rest of the class - his two friends both had Shield Charms on and could handle themselves.

Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle had taken over Buckbeak. He had bowed to Malfoy, who was now patting his beak, looking disdainful. "This is very easy," Malfoy drawled, loud enough for Harry to hear him. "I knew it must have been, if Potter could do it … I bet you're not dangerous at all, are you?" he said to the Hippogriff and Harry's stomach clenched as he realized what was about to happen. "Are you, you ugly great brute?"

 _"Protego!"_

Buckbeak's claws clanged against the hastily raised shield over Malfoy and Hagrid had to intervene and drag the hippogriff back amid screams - mostly from Pansy Parkinson and Malfoy himself.

"Are you a total idiot?" Harry shouted at a terrified Malfoy. "Hagrid just told us hippogriffs attack if you insult them - do you have a death wish, you git?" Harry fumed when he noticed the half-giant's alarmed expression. He'd really wanted Hagrid's first lesson to be perfect and now Malfoy had ruined it. "Next time have your own Shield Charm up - I won't be here to save you of your own idiocy!"

After some hastily cast Shield Charms by the rest of the students - Harry helping those that didn't know the spell as he was the only one able to apply it full-strength on others - the lesson continued but in a less festive and excited mood than before.

 **...**

Valeria knew she had to talk to Hagrid sooner rather than later. Professor Kettleburn had warned her last year that the gentle giant might need some help acclimating in his new position but she'd been terribly busy and forgot all about it. But for now, she had a reversal of time to performs and a few more classes to go to for the day. She took a look at her new schedule, then did a double-take. Arithmancy, Divination, and Muggle studies were all in the same hours...

The Time-Turner could rewind the same period more than once?!


	51. Preconceptions

**a1993: Yes, Harry's confidence is slowly rising as the girls push him into becoming better. Of course, that wasn't the only reason events turned out as they did.**

 **Urazz: Indeed. Valeria can take some unusual precautions against being discovered due to her uncommon skill and resources, but repeated uses would always put her at risk. Even a single use does so, which is why the Unspeakables don't hand out the Time Turners to just anyone. As much as they like to do some practical research, giving them out to full wizards with both ability and desire to exploit the extra time would be unlikely. I suspect that's why they're willing to grant them to students in a highly controlled environment.**

 **Jason: Enforceability of life debts depends on many factors, like any other compulsion. Severity of the debt for one thing, willpower of the individuals involved for another. How much the debtor asks for is also an issue. With the exception of simple formalized spells, nothing is certain and ironclad in magic.**

 **kuriboh1233: The Hour-Reversal Charm is largely unstable. The more you ask of it, the greater the chance you go from simply living history from another point of view into outright changing it and risking paradox. Paradox is bad - the "globally altering the flow of time and events" kind of bad. Time-Turners are objects enchanted with that Charm and as many stabilizers the Unspeakables could add on them. If you exceed the stabilized limits of Time-Travel...**

 **ro781727: badly.**

 **Ariauna: thanks!**

 **...**

Contrary to her other classes, Muggle Studies were a sham. Charity Burbage was a cheerful, bubbly, middle-aged witch that pathologically loved Muggles. The absurd nature of her attitude towards the nonmagical portion of humanity became evident in the first five minutes of her introduction to the class, which included such idiocies as how technology was a miracle of nonmagical inventiveness and brilliance all wizards should embrace in all aspects of life, or how the parochial traditions of Pureblood Houses and the wizarding world in general being in decline was a good thing. The amazing leaps Muggle society had made were even more impressive in her opinion, the superiority of nonmagical nations in social matters beyond question.

"Can you believe this crap?" Valeria whispered as their so-called Professor spoke about the wonders of internal combustion.

"Why Campbell, you don't like the class?" Theodore Nott whispered from the next desk over. "You're a mudblood, are you not?" Valeria didn't bother answering that comment. The boy had his own preconceptions - he came from a Death Eater family after all - but strange as it may seem, they were far less dangerous than the ones Charity Burbage was promoting. Deciding to bite the bullet, she raised her hand.

"Yes, miss Campbell is it?" The cheerful middle-aged witch said then went on. "You're Slytherin's own muggleborn, aren't you? How wonderful - a sign that the blood related propaganda has been finally losing ground!"

"Professor Burbage, I've been wondering..." Valeria said, ignoring the angry whispers from the few other Slytherins present. "Just how many wizards have been killed in blood-related conflicts over the past century worldwide? I couldn't find accurate numbers in the Library."

"That's because the Pureblood-controlled Ministy doesn't want such numbers to become publicly known." She frowned for a moment. "Counting Grindelwald's war in the Continent, that number exceeds eleven thousand for the last century worldwide. Over a thousand of them happened in Britain during the last war, too. A truly terrible loss of life."

"Terrible, Professor?" The blonde Slytherin scowled. "According to Muggle authorities, the publicly admitted loss of life due to genocide over the last century is about thirty million. That's for genocide alone - not armed conflicts or even civil wars. Given the population ratio of wizards to muggles worldwide, muggles killed three to five times more of their own." With a diplomat for a mother it was hard to miss just how ugly things often became when nations, races, religions, or ideologies clashed violently. That the wizarding world effectively had only two major strains of racism was a miracle Valeria didn't want to see gone should wizards more closely imitate nonmagical humans, as Professor Burbage insisted.

"Well, Muggles are a bit violent but that is no reason to discount their accomplishments." The Professor said with mild annoyance. "Just look at what they've done over the past a hundred years - they've physically been to the moon, for Merlin's sake!"

Pressing the issue against a new Professor on the first day of classes didn't seem very wise so the Slytherin witch remained silent. Charity Burbage's beliefs about nonmagical humans might have some major issues but at least on the subject of innovation she was partially correct. Partially because according to several books she'd read before coming to Hogwarts, the advent of technology and the sciences was greatly affected by population increases. As in everything else, numbers matter; ten times as much population as in the 1700s plus urban population rising from two percent to nearly fifty percent would mean two hundred and fifty times more people available for work other than food production. This included scientists and researchers as well as workers; the advancement of technology wasn't so much becoming faster as there were more than two orders of magnitude more people and resources to put into it.

In comparison, the Wizarding World had remained fairly stable in terms of population as a whole, except for the influx of muggleborns. However much one Charity Burbage might want magical society to adapt muggle means and social structures, it was impossible because such ideas were based on -and required- a huge population base to sustain. Valeria was hoping all their future lessons wouldn't focus on their instructor's impossible dreams or this class would be a huge waste of time.

 **...**

In the beginning, Divination had seemed as bad as Muggle Studies. That she was the only Slytherin to take it did not help matters. The tall, very thin witch that taught the subject wore a pair of enormous spectacles which, according to Harry, made her look like an insect; such an appearance did not inspire confidence to the Slytherin witch about the Professor's confidence. In the few minutes that followed, pronouncement after dire pronouncement of impeding doom on several students strengthened Valeria's initial bad impression. Delivered with the deliberate vagueness of a phony Muggle psychic, they were phrased and spoken for maximum intimidation to emotionally engage the recipient and distract them from how little substance and meaning they actually had.

Professor Trelawney was either deluded or a fraud, with only a miniscule chance of her being a powerful enough seer to accurately predict everyday events and be aware of it. Still annoyed by Charity Burbage's less than intelligent spiel, when the opportunity to try something unusual she'd read about in a more advanced Divination textbook presented itself, she jumped on it with both feet. That it would use one of their Professor's more immediate and definite "predictions" was a bonus.

"Neville, stop!" she commanded as soon as Professor Trelawney had made her latest prediction. Her Gryffindor friend did - Neville trusted her enough by now - but many other Gryffindors appeared scandalized by the interruption. Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil especially were staring daggers at her.

"Umm, Valeria what..." Neville tried to ask as she took out her wand but in this case showing was better than telling.

 _"Geminio!_ "

The Duplication Charm wasn't a spell she'd mastered or even gotten an average proficiency at yet but it should do for her purposes. The pink teacup Neville was about to pick up flickered and a near-identical copy appeared next to it on the self. The copy wobbled and flickered every few seconds; it probably wouldn't last more than a couple of minutes. On the other hand, she didn't need it to.

"Here Neville. One pink teacup." She said, passing the copy to him. "If you could drop it then?"

The boy did and the copied pink teacup shattered on the floor, the pieces flickering fitfully for half a minute then vanishing. By then, Valeria had charmed the original pink teacup unbreakable and handed it over to her friend.

"There you go: this one can't be broken while this spell lasts."

"Thanks!" Neville said, the rest of the class staring at her with some confusion.

"Dear girl!" Sybil Trelawney said with an air of giving terrible news. "Do you have any idea what you've done?"

"Prediction manipulation, Professor." She answered confidently. "The event your prediction about Neville referred to was rather obvious, and so was the outcome. By working within the limits of that prediction, I fulfilled it to the letter while altering the spirit of the outcome to fit an alterate interpretation. The prediction remained true while Neville did not lose his cute pink teacup."

"My dear, this is a very advanced skill." Sibyl Trelawney said, wringing her hands. "Unless you've interpreted both the prediction and the situation correctly it can go disastrously wrong, with consequences far worse than the original outcome you were trying to avert! Still..." She frowned at the unbreakable teacup for a moment and made her decision. "For a first attempt this was admirably done: five points to Slytherin. But please dear, don't try this again without consulting an expert."

If an expert was required, Valeria certainly wouldn't consult her! The Slytherin witch didn't believe she had much of an Inner Eye anyway. A couple of sessions with Tom's Diary last year had proven as much. He could have been lying of course, though she couldn't see why. On the other hand, she doubted Tom was a Seer either. If he was, he'd definitely have seen all those failures coming and never tried to be a Dark Lord.

The rest of the lesson didn't go as badly as it could have for her, if one ignored the measuring stares from Lavender and Parvati. Harry on the other had had a much bigger problem as Trelawny focused all her ominous predictions on him. As the barrage of ugly futures culminated into death, Valeria intervened again.

"But Professor it's an omen of death, not specifically Harry's real death, right?" She put as much worry as she could in her voice. She even wrung her hands in imitation of their Professor. "It could refer to anything, as long as Harry was involved right?"

"Yes, well..."

"I mean, Harry could stumble into one of those escaped Death Eaters during their fight with some Aurors..." she interrupted before Trelawny could finish "and a Death Eater could be killed in a fight with Harry a witness."

"Yes, but..."

"Or there could be an accident where the victim's heart stops" more murmurs from the rest of the class could be heard now "but Madam Pomfrey successfully revives them."

"Miss Campbell!"

"Or it could be one of Hagrid's lessons and Draco Malfoy stumbles into the maw of some horrible beast..." The entire class laughed at that and a flustered Trelawney practically threw them out.

The Transfiguration lesson that followed was far more interesting as Professor McGonagal introduced the concept of Animagi to them, providing a perfect example in herself. The Slytherin witch was happy to have some real magic to work with, the two previous hours of idiocy forgotten. Of course, the fact that she'd decided to revert her entire day twice in five-hour increments instead of merely taking two extra hours to attend the incompatible classes helped a lot.

 **...**

"You're in for a real treat today, ladies." Neville said as he, Harry, and Ron caught up with the trio of Slytherin girls.

"Yeah!" Ron said enthusiastically. "Lupin is awesome!"

"I doubt Professor Snape agrees with you, Weasley." Tracey said with a smirk.

"That git?" The redhead laughed. "Neville here put him in his place, didn't you mate?"

"Excuse me, that 'git' as you call him is our Head of House!" Daphne said coldly. "More to the point, he's the resident Potions Master of Hogwarts and everyone - short sighted Gryffindors included - have him in mandatory classes every week. How do you think he'll treat Neville after being mocked like this?" Ron's smile disappeared and Neville paled. Typical boys - never thinking beyond immediate gratification. Harry on the other hand seemed to be in a bad mood.

"Hey, what's up?" Valeria asked the Boy-Who-Sulked.

"Nothing."

"Sure it is." She shook her head while the other four members of their little group bickered. "One of these days Harry I'll manage Legilimency and then you won't have to tell me, I'll already know. But until then, you'll have to stop being such a typical male and actually share your problems with your friends." She shrugged. "Who knows? It might even help with your abysmal social skills."

"Legili-what?" The boy frowned at the strange word and blonde girl rolled her eyes.

"What's what you noticed out of my little speech?" She sighed again. "It's a magical discipline of perceiving, invading, and influencing minds. Muggles would call it mind-reading but it's actually a lot more complex and fluid than that."

"Mind-reading?!" Harry asked with alarm. "Such a thing is possible?"

"Oh come on, Harry! You've already seen full out possession." She said testily and folded her hands. "Such a thing as mind-reading is not only a possibility but an event more common than the lack of information about it in Hogwarts implies. In fact, I have it on good authority that both Professor Snape and our esteemed Headmaster are capable of it."

"What!?" He scowled. "That git! No wonder he knew I hadn't..."

"Valeria, are you coming?" Tracey shouted. "Our Defense class is in five minutes!"

Hastily joining the other two girls, she left Harry to mutter angrily about Professor Snape in his own time. Unless she used the Time-Turner, she only had a few more minutes to prepare before their new Defense Professor threw them against their worst fears. It was a lesson she didn't want to miss.

 **...**

The day had been so full of disappointments Valeria didn't have the energy to follow tracey and Daphne into their usual dueling practice that afternoon. She wondered for a moment if all the extra hours were getting to her - this had been the first day she had lived three times rather than just twice - but discarded the notion. She was both eating and sleeping adequately, maybe even more than required. No, it was all those new Professors' faults.

The young but sickly-looking Professor in the threadbare robes had not put them against a Boggart in class. After a brief roll call, he'd introduced himself and started a far more boring lesson on wizarding pests, such as Doxies. Rather disappointed, the Slytherin witch had retreated into her trunk to do some more brewing and another period of sleep. After waking up from the cramped but still comfortable trunk compartment and making sure the latest batch of Veritaserum was simmering at the right temperature, she'd thought things through for all of five minutes before leaving the Slytherin dormitories in search of her new Defense Professor.

"Yes?" came the dry, tired voice of Remus Lupin not fifteen minutes later as she knocked upon his door.

"It's Miss Campbell, Professor." She said, feigning respect. "May I come in?"

"Yes, of course!" He held the door open for her like a gentleman, and she entered a sparsely decorated room with only a few worn tomes in a near-empty small library, the rest of the space taken up by several large glass jars. Only one of them was full at the moment, a tiny humanoid with spindly limbs swimming inside. A grindylow, perhaps?

"Now young lady," Professor Lupin asked, not unpleasantly. "What is it you wanted of me?"

"It's simple, Professor." She said deciding to be honest, if blunt. "Where is our Boggart?"

"Excuse me?" He asked in turn, his lack of comprehension evident.

"Allow me to rephrase: where is Slytherin's boggart?" She said, a bit more accusation slipping into her words. "The Gryffindors get a highly interesting, useful, and fun lesson which ends up insulting our Head of House. That might have been an accident, but when Slytherin's turn comes for our first Defense lesson, there is no boggart for us." She crossed her arms in obvious displeasure. "Favoritism appears to be rather prevalent in the best magical school in the world, don't you think?"

"Playing favorites was not my intention, Miss Campbell." Lupin said, his eyebrows disappearing into his hairline in surprise.

"Yet, as expected, accidental discrimination occurs alarmingly often." She said with a scowl. "I have friends in Gryffindor, Professor. From what I heard, you could have preserved the boggart for future lessons at any time before Neville finally vanquished it. You did not just rob Slytherin of a valuable lesson though - you did so for all Houses except Gryffindor. Our own Head of House is biased, yes, but at least he teaches the same potions to all four Houses!"

"Miss Campbell, please calm down." Lupin said solemnly. It was a request rather than a demand and that was the only reason Valeria heeded it. "I meant what I said: you not meeting a Boggart in class was entirely coincidental. In fact, it never even crossed my mind that I was doing the other three Houses a disservice." He looked down at her with the same solemn expression. "It should have, and for that you have my apologies. Your demand, blunt though it may have been, was correct. Twenty points to Slytherin for bringing this to my attention."

Valeria's eyes widened for a moment before she could control herself. Professor Lupin had been in Gryffindor, as a strangely cooperative Theodore Nott had informed her, and she had not expected him to admit to any wrongdoing. Halfway through her tirade she was already berating herself for antagonizing a competent and intelligent Professor and was regretting her abrupt decision to make any demands at all. That she had twenty points to show for her temerity was a testament to the fairness of the new Defense Professor rather than her own common sense - or lack thereof.

"I... my apologies, Professor." She finally said when she found the words. "I should not have barged in like this and made demands."

"It appears that both of us had a long day and started on the wrong foot." Professor Lupin said with a self-deprecating smirk. "Why don't we let bygones be bygones and reintroduce ourselves?" He extended his hand, the smirk widening into a genuine smile. "Hi. My name is Remus Lupin and I am your new Defense Professor."


	52. Making a List

**This chapter was a huge problem for my muse. I knew where events had to go, had set everything up since the last book, but when I sat down to write the words would not come. I had to rewrite everything several times until there was a half-decent chapter ready for posting, and it was still pretty small. Sorry for the delay everyone - I promise to make it up to you with some extra long action scenes after setting a few more things up for fourth and seventh years.**

 **whatweareafraidof: The issue is with magic itself. Grow up from the age of 11 (or even earlier, if not a muggleborn) enforcing your will over natural laws or even logic, and eventually you'll gain a mindset unable to grasp a culture based in logic and order. Powerful wizards aren't insane when they say the sky is pink with purple polka dots - they can make it so if they try hard enough. To them logic is less reality than a loose principle easy to overcome in many cases. Hence their inability to grasp some things.**

 **Slytherin's Strumpet: it took some time for Lupin to find another Boggart after the first one was banished in the original books.**

 **BlackGenesis: thanks**

 **Urazz: Valeria has, through her parents, seen much of the worst of the muggle world while effectively living as the child of a wealthy aristocrat. To her, the Wizarding World isn't backwards. In fact, it is incredibly advanced in some things. Much like Justin Finch-Fletchley whose best friends were Hufflepuff purebloods and who saw few issues with the wizarding world beyond blood because he came from a rich family, Valeria has a very different worldview than a middle-class or low-class muggleborn. Don't forget the kind of job her father does, after all.**

 **ro781727: Valeria was rather quick to notice and point out the prejudice of her third teacher. Just because someone is willing to be fair and a good teacher doesn't mean they won't have their own issues.**

 **The Viking Stranger: You'd be surprised.**

 **...**

"Hagrid..." Valeria paused, thinking how to best put it in words so the half-giant would understand. Hagrid was by no means stupid; he just thought differently because to him the world was different in many ways. One of those ways was that since he was a dozen times stronger and bigger than most people - to say nothing of his magic resistance and near immunity to poisons - to him various monsters were about a dozen times less dangerous, falling right into the cuddly category. "You saw what happened with Draco Malfoy. If Harry here hadn't intervened, he might have been badly wounded."

"Yeah, Malfoy is nothing if not a git." Harry interjected. "It was his own fault for not listening and insulting Buckbeak."

"True, but irrelevant." Valeria scowled at the Gryffindor boy, her expression telling him clearly that he was not helping. Unfortunately, her friend mouthed back "what?" in obvious incomprehension. Some would say it was due to Harry being a Gryffindor but she knew that to be wrong: Draco was just as much of an idiot, and far more often at that. Not for the last time, the Slytherin witch cursed the slower mental development of the weaker gender. "Hagrid, think what Lucius Malfoy would do if his only son was wounded in one of your lessons. He might have been kicked out of the board of governors..." the girl resisted basking in hers and Daphne's greatest political accomplishment so far, but barely "...but he still has much wealth and political influence. Most of the wizards in important positions would take his side over yours. You said it yourself: they hate interesting creatures."

"Naah." Hagrid said without concern, still knitting something that looked suspiciously like a student-sized body-disposal bag but might just as easily have been one of his socks. "Dumbledore will handle 'im, I reckon."

"Hagrid, we're at war." She cautioned after throwing silencing charms at the surrounding walls. "The Dark Wanker - oh, grow up Harry!" she snapped as the boy started giggling "tried to gain a body within Hogwarts itself - twice. Both times, it happened when Dumbledore was away from the school."

"Eh?" The half-giant's knitting needles paused in their work. "What does tha have ta do with me lessons?"

"If Dumbledore needs to handle another plot by Malfoy Senior, that's one more thing on his plate. However great a wizard he might be he can't do everything, especially not at the same time." Definitely not. The dismal condition of Wizarding Britain as the so-called blood war was still being fought at a political level was a testament to that. It reminded Valeria of something from her brother's board games. They had another war there, with the exact same name, fought eternally for no reason whatsoever and with no end in sight. One of these days she was going to investigate the origins of that game. Finding a squib or even a muggleborn wizard as one of the authors would not surprise her at all. "None of the Dark Wanker's current supporters can take Dumbledore on; he could stop any plot of theirs within a couple of hours. But what if they simply go for more minor schemes than Dumbledore has time to handle? Some of them will go through. THAT is why we can't make more work for Dumbledore to handle." Valeria finished, hoping both Hagrid and Harry could see her point. "Each problem he has to deal with is one more chance for a supposedly reformed Death Eater to succeed in a plot."

"Neer thought o' tha." The half-giant said, scratching his beard. "What'd ye suggest though? Can't be havin all me lessons be 'bout somma silly, like 'em Flobberworms!"

"Professor Kettleburn sent me a few ideas." The girl said quickly, trying not to show her disgust. Now there was a nightmare: an entire year's worth of lessons dealing with a ten-inch piece of rubbery, brainless, boneless flesh too stupid to even avoid death by overfeeding, whose one redeeming feature was a byproduct useful in many a potion while being more nauseating than any secretion of the human body... especially once one realized it was the only secretion the Flobberworm ejected after being fed. "There are many useful and impressive creatures in Hogwarts, Hagrid. Professor Kettleburn's letter said that you liked most of them. It's just that you got to convince the students to like them, too."

"But they be likable!" Hagrid said in confusion. "Why'd I be needin' ta convince tha students o' tha?"

"Because most students won't care about that." She said bluntly. Hurting Hagrid's feelings now was better than most of his class hating him for years to come, or Lucius Malfoy managing to get him sacked. "Hufflepuffs are hard-working: they take your class because it helps with several kinds of jobs. Ravenclaws do it for the knowledge, of course. Slytherins... many of the creatures around Hogwarts can be _very_ profitable. Only Gryffindors would do it for the excitement, and I bet most are thinking about monster-slaying rather than monster-handling."

"But not us, Hagrid!" Harry was quick to interject, and it was the boy's time to stare at Valeria angrily. "I really enjoyed my ride on Buckbeak." Valeria hadn't. Almost falling off might have had something to do with it. She had no problems showing respect to and being respected by Hippogriffs, but flying on them? Riding on anything whose propulsion she didn't absolutely control and that didn't surround her in a protective cage of either metal or magic was not something she'd ever be comfortable with.

"I see..." The half-giant said soberly. "Whatchya plannin' then? How will students be more interested in me lessons?"

"Professor Kettleburn sent me a list of every creature you have, or you could get." Valeria said quickly, before Hagrid's mood could plummet any lower. "I thought we'd discuss how to arrange your lessons to include creatures that are impressive, as well as those that are useful, or that the students would really like. That way your lessons would be more interesting to everyone."

"We'll also have to talk about safety, Hagrid." Harry said. "I mean, you know how most Slytherins behave - no offense, Val."

"None taken." She said cheerfully. "Though I'd like to point out that Lavender and Parvati are in at least as much danger as Draco. Who knows when they'll decide to start talking fashion or horoscopes in class and the acromantula they're supposed to be handling decides to take a bite out of them."

Both students laughed but Hagrid remained curiously silent, frowning in intense concentration. "Acromantulas?" He finally asked rather seriously. "Wha' made ya think 'bout 'em?"

"That was Tracey's idea, actually." Valeria said, smothering any further giggling.

"Yeah, at it was awesome." nodded Harry enthusiastically. "You know how Professor Snape provides potions for the infirmary so Hogwarts doesn't have to buy them, and Professor Sprout produces rare ingredients the school can sell to cover expenses?" Neither Harry nor Valeria had known that small but important fact before their conversation with their friends.

"The mandrakes, for example." Valeria said. "Professor Sprout teaches the second years how to take care of them every year, then Hogwarts provides mandrake extract to several apothecaries every Summer. Tracey suggested that the Care of Magical Creatures class could do the same."

"Eh? Wha does tha' 'ave ta do whith Acromantulas?"

"Their venom sells at over 50 Galleons a pint, Hagrid. Their silk is pretty expensive, too. Then you have Thestral and Unicorn hair, Erumpent horn and fluid, Murtlap essence, Salamander blood, and even Manticore venom if you manage to get one like Professor Kettleburn did back in '87." She smiled up at the Half-Giant. "Money might not be important to you Hagrid, but it is to a lot of people. Also, those ingredients have powerful properties the Ravenclaws can experiment with and which would be very welcome in Professor Snape's class, too. And then, of course, there's Norbert."

"Err..." Suddenly, their biggest friend became very uncomfortable.

"Hagrid..." Harry zeroed in on the older man's discomfort instantly. Valeria, too, remembered Professor Kettleburn's warning from the year before but let the Gryffindor boy take point on this one. "How are things with Norbert going?"

"I... ah... might be... havin' a few problems." Hagrid went red from embarassment. "And it's Norberta, not Norbert. The little tyke is female."

"Little tyke?" Oh dear. Valeria knew she wouldn't like the answer to Harry's next question. "Just how large has... Norberta grown so far?"

"Err... twenty feet?" Hagrid scratched his beard nervously. "May 'ave bin twenty-five..."

Figured. From what Valeria had read most dragons grew rapidly despite their size, gaining up to a foot in length per month until they attained their full growth - which could reach 50 feet for some specimens. Problem was, those figures were for wild dragons or those in reservations. As seen with any animals or even humans, quantity and quality of food affected growth considerably and for _some_ reason, she couldn't see Hagrid not feeding his baby as well and as much as possible. If domestic cats were on average twice the size of equivalent strays (not counting extra weight due to castration), how big would Norberta get? At twenty-five feet she'd be at the upper limit of what Hagrid could handle. Not as large as a fully grown Fluffy (a.k.a. Cerberus), but with more natural weapons and a nastier disposition...

"Hagrid!" Harry's shout got the Slytherin witch out of her mind and back to reality. "Why are you favoring your right side?"

"It's nuthink... nuthink..." No it wasn't. Now that Harry had mentioned it, Valeria could see that the half-giant was leaning imperceptibly to his right... and had been for the entirety of their visit in his cabin. Scowling, she took out her wand and tapped the very tall man's elbow. Hagrid might benefit from magic resistance, but his clothes didn't; the eerie shimmer of a Disillusionment charm slid across his enormous jacket and blouse, rendering both nigh-invisible. It also revealed a deep purple bruise at the half-giant's right side as wide as Valeria was tall. Smaller bruises covered his torso and arms, most of them already fading as they must have been slowly healing for days. There was even a very long but thankfully shallow gash, and a couple of patches of singed, hairless skin where something had tried but luckily failed to burn Hagrid with magical fire.

Harry hissed at her side, obviously both angry and horrified. Such wounds would have put him or Valeria in the hospital - or even straight to the morgue, if wizards had such things. In his panic, he was forgetting Hagrid massed well over twenty times what either of them did, was supernaturally resilient, and magically resistant. To him, while painful, such wounds would be mostly superficial.

"Hagrid, you... you're a mess! You can't keep playing with a dragon!" He was one to talk. How many times had he been wounded playing Quidditch, where even a medium-speed impact was the equivalent of a car crash? "Valeria, back me up on this!" His expression promised many ugly things if she didn't.

"Harry's right, Hagrid. At least partially. Dragons can't be normally domesticated and..."

"I know wha' I bin doin!" Hagrid exclaimed, way more upset about this than their trying to plan better lessons for him. "I cannae abandon Norberta! She be my baby!"

"All right." The blonde girl sighed. She was probably going to regret this, but there were ways to help Hagrid without taking his beloved monster from him. "Harry, Tracey said she had some business with Neville and Ron. Any idea where they went?"

"Yeah, they said they'd put in a couple hours of dueling practice." He scowled again at Hagrid's many wounds. "What do they have to do with anything?"

"Tracey has my potions kit. She wanted to show the Carrow Twins and Colin Creevey a few things about magical cosmetics." And thank Morgana for that. When she'd offered to help the three younger students after the horrible events of last year, she had not expected her schedule to be nearly as loaded... or for them to be so very annoying, especially when all three of them were in the same room. Daphne had jokingly said one of the Carrows would either end up Colin's husband, or his murderer - or both. And then she'd refused to do any sort of baby sitting, the traitor. Luckily, her other Slytherin friend had offered to handle them a few times until Valeria could settle into her new schedule, possibly because she found their antics amusing, or because a half-blood in Slytherin would find a valuable connection in the Carrows.

"Why would you need that?" Harry frowned. Maybe Hagrid's condition had upset him more than it seemed to.

"Because there are a couple of potions that could help Hagrid with his little problem." She said, raising a pale eyebrow in challenge until Harry's face lit with recognition. It was time to teach Hagrid how to brew Gregory's Unctuous Unction. After having to teach Neville to overcome both his fear of Professor Snape and a tendency to dangerously misbrew most potions, how hard could it be?


	53. Slight Miscalculations

**Many thanks to ro781727 for pointing out a serious mistake about the Creevey brothers in the last chapter. It's fixed now.**

 **The Viking Stranger: Oh, there are many shenanigans yet to be done with Norberta. As for jinxing themselves, the kids do live in a universe where there are actual jinxes, and where entire disciplines of magic are influenced by belief and emotion.**

 **ro781727: Because they don't want to. You try to convince Hagrid to give his baby up when there's a chance he doesn't absolutely have to. You try to convince Valeria to give up a convenient source of free alchemical materials such as shed dragonscales, dragon's blood, dragon poison and the like. You try to convince either of them they shouldn't be experimenting with dragons. After all (in their minds) hiding a dragon shouldn't be as hard as hiding an entire colony of man-eating spiders that can grow to the size of small elephants.**

 **gwh: Everyone has prejudices, even when they don't notice it or they think it's justified. To err is human, after all.**

 **dragonblade3200: Nice catch on the letter being important. Can't tell you if your guess is correct though. As for Hermione, this story examines what would happen if the 'brightest witch' was the opposite of Hermione. Valeria has essentially replaced the original bookworm. :)**

 **...**

"Faster! Faster!" The terrified Slytherin girl shouted in the Gryffindor boy's ear even as her deathgrip threatened to crush his ribs.

"I'm flying as fast as the broom can go!" Harry shouted back, then took them through a barrel roll followed by a rapid descent that traded attitude for a bit more speed. His passenger squealed and while Harry would have snickered at her break of composure in any other situation, the two of them had bigger problems at that moment. The icy winds threatened to knock them off their broom but thanks to several warming and impervius charms, they'd avoided frostbite or a coating of rime freezing them solid on Harry's Nimbus 2000.

"Then why are they gaining on us?!" Harry didn't need to look back to verify the truth of her words. The icy chill gripping his chest through their warming charms and the faint echoes in his mind that would soon become horribly recognizable screams were proof enough. For he and Valeria were being pursued by dementors.

Contrary to Harry's, Neville's, and Ron's expectations, and Daphne's and Tracey's alarmed admonitions to stop trying to find novel ways to blow herself up, Valeria's lessons with Hagrid had gone rather well. The massive man had displayed a skill in rendering ingredients that had left Harry at least gobsmacked, until the the Slytherin witch reminded him Hagrid had spent half a century of his life rendering animals and plants as a hunter, and preparing the various strange meals his many pets required. Hagrid had even made an enthusiastic and moderately successful first attempt at brewing the difficult potion, which showed how sheer motivation could often trump inexperience. Unfortunately, they'd soon stumbled upon a little snag.

Dragons could be affected by potions - Ron had confirmed his brother Charlie had once told him it was easier to trick a dragon into eating food laced with sleeping potion than stunning it - but dosage was an issue. And with the heightened security around the castle Valeria's stores of ingredients were running low, not to mention her illegal brewing enterprise had ground to a halt. They'd decided waiting for the first Hogsmeade weekend would take too long. Relying only on a couple visits a year, visits they could not control and during which much of the student population would be present, would cause more problems than it would solve. Which is why they'd tried to circumvent security on Harry's trusty Nimbus... and failed dismally.

"Don't you dare fall off your broom on me, Potter!" Valeria shouted again as Harry's hands grew numb and begun to shake. "I really don't know how to fly this contraption at over a hundred miles an hour!"

"You think I enjoy seeing my mother's final moments?" Harry snarled back as he led them through a series of aerial maneuvers over the Forbidden Forest... which only gained them a brief respite. "I'm doing my best to break away, here." The girl's next squeal gave Harry some grim satisfaction, quickly followed by guilt. However good a friend Valeria was at most times, she could become a right bitch when things didn't go her way. Ron would have him believe that was true of all girls, his opinion supported by horror stories of his own mother and sister at their worst, but Harry refused to believe him. Mainly because Ron behaved in precisely the same way when he was upset.

"Hold steady, I'm about to try something!" She shouted again and the pressure against Harry's ribcage was cut in half as the girl fumbled one-handed through her pockets for something. Harry gritted his teeth as the soul-chilling aura of those horrible demons intensified once more, trying to control his broom with shaky hands as darkness encroached on the edges of his vision.

"Whatever it is... you're doing... you'd better do it... quickly..." He stammered in fear, uncertain that the girl had even heard him. His mother's final moments approached once more and his flying speed faltered.

Suddenly though, there was a shift in his emotions. His secret guilt, that voice in the back of his mind that whispered another reason for his being so weak against dementors, was suddenly silenced. He'd often wondered since the start of term: was he affected so much because he was weak as Malfoy claimed, or because he wanted to hear his mother's voice one more time? His doubts now were smothered by an inexplicable, insane bout of cheerfulness. The most horrible creatures in the world were trying to scare him by showing him something he wanted to see and hear, a brief glimpse of what had once been his heart's desire. Why should he fear seeing and hearing his mother one last time? Why, when her sacrifice was proof of how much he'd loved him?

Fear and insane cheer fought, and Harry's laughter echoed over the Forbidden Forest. The dementors' hold on him waning, he put a powerful burst of speed into his broom with renewed energy. Within moments, the two students had left the pursuing dementors behind and Harry could really appreciate the adrenaline high of the high-speed chase.

"Thank Morgana!" Valeria exclaimed behind him. "Can you put us down next to Hagrid's hut?" Harry couldn't understand her nervousness; this was flying on a broom - the best thing in the world! Laughing now, the Gryffindor boy put them through a series of high-speed aerial maneuvers even as Hagrid's hut grew larger and larger in their sights. His passenger squealed and again tried her hand at homicide through squeezing him to death. Rolling his eyes - not that the girl could see them - Harry performed a perfect high-decceleration landing, if only to get rid of her. Laughing again as his passenger lost her breakfast next to one of Hagrid's enlarged pumpkins, Harry practically jumped up and down in exuberance. He was so high after that dementor chace that he felt like he could do anything. As if...

 _"Fi- Finite Incantantem!"_

Amid bouts of retching, Valeria managed to throw a general counterspell his way and Harry's sense of perfection and glee vanished as if cut by a knife. His knees buckled as the enormity of what had almost happened registered and all the dread and doubt he had not felt during the last part of their escape returned with a vengeance. Celebrating in the air where more dementors could see them? Going through all those unnecessary maneuvers with a passenger that was afraid of flying? What the hell had he been thinking?

"Valeria, I'm so sorry..." he started as soon as he could find his voice once more but the girl stopped him by raising one hand. She looked horrible: still coughing, face red and eyes firmly shut as she was fighting nausea, and from how her feet shook the only reason she hadn't already collapsed was the huge pumpkin she was leaning against. That, and sheer stubbornness.

"No, that's all on me Harry." She groaned and finally leaned back, her stomach too empty for anything else to come up. "Dementors or no, I'm never casting an overpowered Cheering Charm on you again."

 **...**

"You're late." Valeria complained in obvious impatience as the last member of their group finally arrived.

"A witch is never late, Campbell." Daphne said mock seriously. "Nor is she early. She arrives precisely when she means to." The taller blonde girl scowled. "Besides, I had to save Astoria from Draco Malfoy's clutches - again."

"Why'd you have to lend her that novel, Val?" Tracey complained with a groan. "The past two days she's either been quoting from it or complaining about her little sister." The brunette fixed her oldest friend with an impressive glower. "Pansy and Millicent threatened to hang you from the ceiling by your tongue if they hear one more word about Astoria, and I'm not sure I can blame them. Not that I share Pansy's Malfoy-centered jealousy or anything, but it is becoming annoying."

"What novel?" Piped in Ron, not at all interested in either rumors or girl-talk and eager to change the subject at the filmsiest excuse.

"Never you mind that." Valeria said as everyone gathered together, Neville and Harry finishing a discussion on Quidditch of all things. "We're here to test a hypothesis that might or might not solve our dementor-related conundrum."

"English, please." The Gryffindor redhead asked. "We know you're smart: you don't have to use big words to convince us." His foot beat against the stone floor at an impatient rhythm and he seemed incapable of staying in one place. "Honestly, I don't see why we should all be together when discussing anything important. Can't we, dunno, have whoever comes up with something inform the rest of us via owl? We did confirm the owls can deliver letters between Houses in five minutes or so, right?"

"No, Ronald, we most definitely can't." Daphne said, arms crossed. "Not after our unofficial so-called leaders almost killed themselves trying to hoodwink the dementors yestarday."

"Blimey, Harry... you really did try for Hogsmeade?" Ron looked on as his best friend went red with embarassment. "Why didn't you take me with... err..." he rapidly backpedaled as he saw the gathering storm in Daphne's face, the furious pureblood princess a split second from drawing her wand. "I mean, that was horribly irresponsible - you could have died!"

"Amusing as it'd be to see Daphne hex the lot of you..." Tracey cheerfully interrupted "we came here to test an idea the wiser heads in this little group of ours came up with."

"Wiser heads?" Neville asked thoughtfully. "Which would those be?"

"Daphne and I, obviously." Tracey replied with a smirk. "Especially after Val voted herself out through the latest round of shenanigans. Now, think back. What happened last year that might really help us now?"

"We got rid of Lucius Malfoy's influence?" Neville asked tentatively.

"Harry proved how much of a Dark-Lord-of-Conjured-Snakes he can be?" Ron suggested, then dodged an indignant kick to the shin from his best friend.

"We got some influence with the Minister of Magic?" Harry tried his newfound but limited experience with politics.

"We learned lots of subterfuge-related spells by Lockhart?" Valeria tried, not really focused. Her mind was on whether she could use the Time-Turner and prior knowledge of events to avoid the dementors. If she observed the soul-sucking fiends' positions over a given time then moved to the past and went through the perimeter at a place she'd already observed the dementors would not be...

"You're all hopeless." Tracey said, shaking her head.

"They merely have less experience of pureblood society than we do. That doesn't make them hopeless." Daphne said generously, surprising everyone. Her following statement proved they weren't suddenly dealing with an impostor however. "No, what proves their idiocy is either their tendency to attempt insane Gryffindor stunts or the belief that the phrase 'for Science' justifies meddling in things wizardkind was not meant to know."

"I've never used that phrase!" came Valeria's not very persuasive denial, which everyone saw for what it was. Even those of them like Ron, who had no idea what the phrase actually meant.

"Dobby!" Tracey shouted in exasperation, bringing the discussion back to the point. "Daphne and I were discussing Dobby earlier this morning."

"Lucius Malfoy's insane elf?" Ron asked in confusion. "The one Harry stol... err... freed from the Malfoys' tyranny last year? What about him?"

"You can't really free an elf like that, Weasley." Daphne said with her usual air of superiority the rest of them had gotten used to - even somehow became fond of - over the past two years.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked. "I got Lucius Malfoy to give him clothes, Dobby is a free elf. End of story."

"Except it isn't, Harry." Daphne said in a much softer, more tolerant tone. "Servitude has been bred into House Elves for thousands of years - since before the Founders' time. Not to mention the ancient magic binding their entire race to wizardkind. In theory, an elf given clothes is free of binding obligation. But both their conditioning and their magic would push them almost irresistibly into serving wizards anyway."

"That's horrible!" Harry said, both alarmed and angry.

"As with all things, it depends on the situation." Daphne countered. "In a true wizarding household house elves are valued members, not slaves. They have a symbiotic relationship where their magic flourishes through their bond to the House and their master, and where they are content and happy. And in return, they give their masters unparalleled service, becoming their right hands and confidants, and enjoy the same luxury of living in a house of great wealth and magic." She looked at Ron then. "Have you never been told why only great wizarding manors have house elves, Harry? The house elves themselves choose to work where they do."

"But Dobby was a slave!" The Boy-Who-Lived was very angry now. "Don't tell me his stay at the Malfoys was anything short of slavery - he had to iron his own hands for Merlin's sake!"

"There are always unfortunate cases." Daphne said, unmoved. "After an elf is bound into service, the ancient magic upon them demands allegiance. That some wizards exploit this to the point of slavery is on their head. It is still better than the alternative though, where a freed elf descents into insanity, wastes away until they perish, or trick themselves into believing they are free but still end up embracing any excuse to find a master to follow."

"Isn't..." Harry paused to collect his thoughts. "Isn't there a way to help them?"

"Of course." Daphne said, not unkindly. "Accept their desire to belong, to be useful, but still treat them as persons. A master ordering his house elves should be no different than a Head of House running their family. Would _you_ treat your own family as slaves Potter, even if you were in a position to do so? Even if some family heads do it with some members of theirs?"

"I understand." Of course he did. There was a reason Daphne had used that comparison to make her point, though Valeria wasn't sure using Harry's past like that was a good thing in this case. "But what does Dobby have to do with anything?"

"I doubt Dobby has found another master to serve." Daphne said. "I doubt he's even looking very hard. Do you realize how rare it is for an elf to do things for a wizard he's not bound to on his own initiative? To go as far as to betray his master for said wizard, indirectly or not?"

"I don't understand."

"Harry." Neville spoke up, obviously understanding Daphne's point. "Dobby wants you to be his master. Whether he'll admit it or not, whether he asks for money or not, I'm sure he'd do anything for you. That probably is what Daphne and Tracey want to test; if a house elf wants you for a master so strongly, they might have attuned to you already. You might be able to call Dobby from a distance. And if he's willing to help and you're willing to pay what he asks... well... what harm can it do?" The still timid Gryffindor fidgeted nervously at Harry's intense scrutiny. "I mean, the school has been invaded by dementors and Hagrid has a dragon he can't control. We need all the help we can get."

"Right." Harry frowned but seemed to accept their explanations, at least for now. "How can Dobby help us with that, though? And how do I call him anywa- OW!" The Boy-Who-Lived rubbed the back of his head where Valeria had hit him to knock his brain into gear.

"House elves can Apparate even inside Hogwarts, take with them passengers or heavy loads, can do all sorts of magic while still hiding from the Ministry, and are accepted in wizarding society to the point that nobody will challenge their presence unless what they're doing is blatantly illegal." Valeria said pointedly, reminding Harry of his own experiences with Dobby. "And you call him by his name backed by intent, as with all magic. If he considers you his master, he'll come."

"OK, OK, no need to get violent." Harry complained.

"I think she's following the traditionally accepted practice of beating some sense into you." Tracey said helpfully. "There wouldn't be a phrase for it if it wasn't a thing, see?" Harry glared at the oh-so-innocent trio of Slytherin girls for a moment, then wisely decided to ignore their shenanigans. Sighing, he called out loudly.

"DOBBY!" There was a soft pop of displaced air and a little creature maybe two and a half feet tall with batlike ears and green eyes appeared before them.

"The great Harry Potter called and Dobby happily answered!" The elf said excitedly. Nobody in their right mind could deny the little guy would do everything Harry asked of him. "What can Dobby do for the great Harry Potter and friends?"

Things were finally looking up this year.


	54. Hogsmeade

**ro781727: Hold your hippogriffs, the resolution of the dogfather plot won't be coming for awhile yet.**

 **Urazz: you must remember that Daphne and Tracey are basically noble scions - heiresses. They aren't likely to stand back and let somebody else make the shots if they think they're behaving moronically. Not after their friendship with Valeria and the Gryffindors pulled them into the limelight, anyway.**

 **Mari Clair Roemajji Celts: Thanks for liking this story and Valeria. For the stupid pureblood bigotry, they're mostly what their parents made them, and their parents are what Tom and the prejudices of the wizarding world made them. Val wasn't as much annoyed with Tom for lying as she was with herself for not uncovering the truth earlier; she just took it out on others (something her friends take her to task for). As for how deadly she is, she's still young and inexperienced - big magic we won't be seeing until later. And it's not her wand you should watch out for, but danger coming from a direction you aren't expecting.**

 **The Viking Stranger: and the big action in the story hasn't even started yet. :)**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the canoc characters and plotlines in the series; they belong to JK Rowling. That's why the plot is about to be butchered and original or undeveloped characters are making appearances.**

 **...**

"I can't believe Selwyn managed to get us brooms." Anty said as he opened the third pack of supplies they'd received from the other group over the past couple of months.

"Dolohov, you know how goblins are." Ruddy said as he gave her the bag of special ingredients and several shrunk vials of a fairly dangerous potion. "As long as you have an access key or family pass, they don't care what the Ministry says or how many idiots you've offed. All they care about is business. And the blokes in the black market are even more helpful."

"Then why aren't we buying stuff, too?" Anty asked with a pointed look in her direction. "I could do with some camping gear, maybe an expanded tent. Sleeping on bare rocks is hard." Then he laughed at his own joke and she had to roll her eyes.

Bella saw the boys as useful. She really did. Most of them simply sucked at decision-making, except perhaps Selwyn. The reason they didn't buy -or steal- more was security. There were ways to detect enchanted items if one looked hard enough, especially the extravagant things Anty would have insisted on if she'd allowed it. She knew Arthur Weasely well - they'd been in the same year in Hogwarts. Fool that he was in most things, he had been better than her in enchantment. A weak character, easily influenced, but quite confident in his favorite subjects. He might have made something of himself if he hadn't been ensnared by the Prewett bitch. And if they weren't careful now, he might find them when the Aurors could or would not.

Tapping one of the special ingredients Selwyn had sent with her wand, she returned it to its original size.

"Disgusting." Another member of their little group commented. "I don't understand how you can work with... that for hours every day."

"Rabbi, none of us have had a bath for a long time." She said, laying down the foundations for the basic enchantments. "If this still revolts you, it has less to do with lack of cleanliness and more with less... tangible deficiencies." She hummed a jaunty tune as she cast for protection, hardness, preservation, speed, and a bit of mind magic for direction and purpose. "Besides, we have far too much to do to get lazy now."

"What's the hurry?" Andy asked with some interest. There had been little action over the past few weeks and that, for him, was a sorry state of affairs. Not that Bella could say she disagreed.

"If I remember correctly," and she did "we only have a week left if we must be ready by the 31st of October."

"All Hallows Eve, eh?" He nodded. "Yes, that would do nicely. Would make our efforts that much easier, too."

"That, and it's the first Hogsmeade weekend." She smirked. "All third years and up have been to Hogsmeade on that day since before our time. We don't want to disappoint Potter and Longbottom now, do we?" She cackled merrily. Nobody else did.

 **...**

"It's a shame you won't be coming with us, mate." Ron said as they took up their usual seats in Professor Babbling's classroom. "Bloody shame you couldn't get them Dursleys to sign your permission slip eh? Before their house mysteriously burned to the ground, I mean."

"Shhhh!" Valeria interrupted their little conversation. "Professor Babbling said we'll learn the basics of magical intent today. You might not care about that, but I happen to like Ancient Runes." In fact, the class was turning out to be her favorite. Ever since the aging Professor had explained in simple terms how intent was a common element in all magic and why Runes were more about pure intent than any other branch of the magical arts, she'd loved it.

"Feh, Bill gave me a few hints on the basics back in Egypt." Ron boasted. "I don't think we need to bother about this before Babbling starts actually teaching the old runic alphabet."

"Do you enjoy performing in front of an audience, Weasley?" she whispered as the Professor entered the classroom and the various discussions slowly wound down.

"Huh?" Eloquent as always, wasn't he?

"Last year's bet, Ronald." She smirked while he blanched. "If you're so determined to remain a lazy git, you better start practicing your idiot impersonnation. You'll have to announce you are one to the entire student body by year's end, remember?"

That shut him up real good at precisely the right moment for her to pay attention to Babbling's lecture. Unlike Riddle who favored elaborate and fairly abstract explanations, the aging witch had a way to explain even the most complex ideas in simple terms. That helped enormously not only because every student could learn something out of the lesson but because even advanced students could benefit from approaching the subject from multiple directions.

"OK class, to recap. We've seen how runic script is used in official documents, as decoration, infused with minor magical effects, or even as an ancient form of enchantment before current wand-based techniques became available." Brown eyes, pale with age but still seemingly able to look through them and analyze them down to the last molecule, fixed the students with a very serious expression. "I believe you're ready to briefly glimpse one of the most fundamental truths about magic, now."

Furious whispering filled the entire class, ideas and opinions on what their Professor meant by that exchanged at a frenetic pace. None of them were quite sure of what she was about to say; their books had certainly not included or even alluded to anything about a "fundamental truth".

"Many and varied are the ways in which magic is used but they all share a common root. When it comes to wizardkind, magic is the will of the witch or wizard; an idea or intent we feel strongly enough and clearly enough to make reality." Well, duh. Everybody knew than intent or emotion mattered - it was nothing new. "Incantations, wand movements, runes, the parts of rituals that don't directly carry magic on their own, all are effectively props. Ways to focus the mind into doing what it wants, mental exercises through which thought is shaped. They're not a requirement of magic itself."

Most of the class disagreed with that sentiment - loudly. They'd learned all their lives how to painstakingly memorize incantations, do the wand movements perfectly, learned complex Trasfiguration theory, and some of them had just started to be taught Arithmantic tables, while others knew of family rituals. How could all those possibly be no more than mere props?"

"Think!" their Professor demanded. "You're going to learn nonverbal spells in a few years. How can incantations really matter if one can do magic without them? And consider how your teachers can perform many spells by simply pointing their wands; have you seen them need elaborate gestures for their spells?"

"Then why do we learn those things, Professor?" asked Lisa Turpin, a Ravenclaw girl.

"For the same reason you learn words, Miss Turpin. And it's not because of a need to communicate. Language orders the thoughts; the mind links images and ideas to the far simpler concept of a series of sounds or letters and from then on you can quickly recall the image or idea by recalling the word." The aging witch smiled. "There's even an experiment that proves that. Take a hundred pictures of people you've never known, and give names to half of them. Then, after a week or so of studying the pictures, see how easier it is to recall the details of those people you've named compared to those you have not. The same concept applies to magic. The exact intent and emotion that leads to a given act of magic is extremely hard to focus on its own. By linking it to simple words or actions that are meaningful, we can make magic that much easier to both learn and perform. That is why verbal wand-based magic is much easier to do than nonverbal, wandless magic." Professor Babbling laughed. "Of course, it really helps that magic is also influenced by collective belief. It's easier to cast a spell with the incantations and wand movements used by countless wizards for thousands of years than to cast it with another prop."

The lesson continued, most students both surprised and excited by what they were learning...

 **...**

"Don't worry about me guys." Harry said, trying to appear unaffected by the loss of the Hogsmeade trips. "Wood isn't going to Hogsmeade either. As soon as he learned I had to stay behind, he suggested we do a few more hours of Quidditch practice. So, you see, I will be doing something useful at least..."

"I don't understand why McGonagal didn't let you go." Tracey said with a frown. "Claiming the permission slip was burned along with the Dursleys' house was perfect. There was no way for her to check whether you were lying and insisting you couldn't go despite that was totally unfair. I doubt she realized you were lying after all the practive we've had over the past year."

"Maybe she thinks as we do." Neville said with a strange gleam in his eyes. If Valeria didn't know better, she'd say the Gryffindor boy was angry. He often seemed to be lately, and that wasn't the only change in his personality. He'd been throwing himself into each one of their practices with a focus that matched Valeria's after the bullying incidents in her first year, and his determination to keep practicing despite exhaustion or minor injuries was alarmingly out of character for the normally timid boy. "Maybe Professor McGonagal believes the Death Eaters are specifically after Harry - in which case she'd use any excuse to keep him in the safety of the castle, right?"

"In any case we'll bring you a huge load of sweets from Honeydukes, mate." Ron said, the gleam in his eyes saying clearly that he couldn't wait to sample the goods of the famous wizarding sweet shop. "Any preferences, or you'll settle for treacle tart and Every-Flavor Beans?"

"There's more to life than food, Ronald." Valeria snapped then turned to Harry. "If you really want to come, Harry, it should be easy. Dobby could transport you from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade and back in an instant. Just make sure to disguise yourself, OK? A detention with your first Quidditch match in a few days would not be fun, especially if Wood gets his hands on you after all those missed practices."

"Naah. You go and have fun in the village. I'll be OK." Harry said, not really believing it. Of all his bad luck over the years, missing on the best extracurricular activity Hogwarts offered due to a bloody piece of paper must be the worst. One little signature and he could have spent Halloween with all his friends. "At least I won't be riding on carriages drawn by winged skeletal horses from Hell, right?"

"They're called Thestrals, Harry. And they're rather nice." Tracey said indignantly. "Quite useful too; Hagrid says they can fly across England in an hour and carry great loads."

"What winged skeletal horses?" Ron asked half curiously, half fearfully. "The carriages are simply animated, right? There's nothing drawing them, right?"

Rolling her eyes, Valeria flicked her wand in the direction of the nearest carriage. A sizable blob of soft mud was levitated off the ground then hurled at the Thestral, splashing on it and running down its body. Invisible or not, the spooky but interesting magical beast was fairly clearly defined by the thin film of brown mud that remained upon it. Ron jumped back several steps, and many other students gathering for the trip to Hogsmeade did the same. A few of them even screamed. The skeletal-looking, reptilian, winged horse stared at Valeria and neighed in annoyance. The Slytherin witch flicked her wand a few times, her silent Cleaning Charms getting rid of only tiny patches of mud. Now annoyed herself, she said the incantation out loud.

 _Scourgify!_

"Honestly Ronald, do you only believe in what you can see?" The Thestral, now clear of mud, stopped staring at her with that unnerving gaze. Like Harry, she had a far closer look at Death than she would have liked and could see the beasts just fine - but had known what drew the carriages long before then. "I don't understand why Hagrid refuses to use mud or flour or even paint to circumvent their invisibility in his classes. Some of those fifth-years could use a little bit more knowledge so as they stop being afraid of their own shadow." She finished with a scowl directed at several students now refusing to ride on the carriages. Idiots.

At that moment, a very annoyed Professor McGonagal hurried in towards them and their little discussion came to an end.

 **...**

"The students have just arrived." Anty announced with some excitement. "Can't see Potter anywhere though. Maybe this thing is broken." He tapped his fingers against the stone cylinder and Bella huffed at this further proof of his idiocy.

"It took me hours to build and calibrate a decent telescope out of mud, Dolohov." She growled, calling him by something other than a childish nickname for once. "If you break it you _will_ be building a new one, however long it takes. If memory serves, you were rubbish in Astronomy so that might be a long time." She bet he didn't know how to make glass without transfiguring it so it could hold enchantments, either. Given the caliber of idiots she had to work with, she would have made the telescope unbreakable if she had not run out of time; one more enchantment, even a minor one, would have required more refined materials than she could make at short notice.

"Don't get your knickers in a twist, Bella." Her husband tried to stave off another violent argument before it started, but his gift with words failed him utterly. If not for the deadline they had to work with she'd be teaching him another lesson then and there. "The ground force is in position, the bait has been prepared, the brooms are ready, and we've been practicing our spellcasting till our coordination is perfect. We'll pull off this plan of yours." No matter how crazy it might be. He didn't say so - he wasn't suicidal - but he was thinking it. They'd lived and worked together long enough for her to read him.

It didn't matter though - not if they succeeded. In the anniversary of their Lord's disappearance and their enemy's greatest triumph they'd deal the Ministry and the hated Order a blow from which they could not recover. Achieving even one of their three primary targets would do as much. Yes, the plan was extremely risky. Yes, there was a chance they'd be caught, even killed in its execution if even one part of the plan went wrong. But sacrifices had to be made for victory to be achieved, possibly their own lives, but preferably those of their enemies.

Bella had no problem whatsoever with either.

 **...**

"So, where are we going?" Neville asked excitedly as soon as they'd come off the Thestral-drawn carriage. "We have so much to see and so little time." There had been a slight delay as McGonagal had had to convince the student body that no, it wasn't some kind of sick joke; the hogwarts carriages had always been drawn by Thestrals and that no, there wouldn't be any alternative means of transport provided for any fearful idiots before everyone had calmed down enough for the trip. That had cost them half a precious hour out of their Hogsmeade visit.

"Here." Valeria said, handing over several pieces of parchment filled with a detailed sketch. "Maps of Hogsmeade courtesy of yours truly. That way you won't get lost and you'll know exactly where everything you want to visit might be found."

"You've managed to make maps out of what you saw in a single brief visit last year?" Ron asked incredulously.

"Come on, Weasley, you've never heard of owl order?" Tracey said impatiently. "She obviously bought them. Also, that visit was against the rules, remember? Keep your voice down."

"Actually, I made them myself." Valeria admitted, annoyed that she had not considered buying such maps; it would have saved her an hour's work. "Went up the Astronomy tower and used one of the telescopes. If we can map the moons of Jupiter with them, we can certainly map a village a couple of miles away. That and a Geminio Charm and here we are."

"Awesome." Neville said with a small smirk, an expression you didn't seem often in the reserved Gryffindor's face. "The maps still won't decide for us where we'll be going today." The group of five laughed at that for a moment.

"I want to visit the Post Office and the Hog's Head." Valeria said. "I'm waiting for a reply from..."

"...one of your weird deals." Ron groaned. "Why don't we go to Honeydukes? You can have Dobby pick up your stuff any time you want!"

"Following your logic, Weasley, there's no need to go to Honeydukes either." Daphne said. "Don't tell me you haven't been using Dobby to get all those bags of Chocolate Frogs you've been consuming the past week!"

After a brief debate they settled on the Three Broomsticks, the second of Ron's suggestions. For some inexplicable reason, the youngest Weasley boy's ears had turned crimson upon his suggesting they go there, and Tracey was very interested to find out why.

They'd only just walked up to the pleasantly decorated inn after renewing their warming charms when the screaming started.


	55. Fire and Terror

**httpkirby: Yep, Valeria is quite perceptive. Not always attentive to her surroundings when something important is going on, though.**

 **Mari Clair Roemajji Celts: Valeria? Kind? She does treat people fairly most times and she does offer advice, but she's more ruthless than kind IMHO.**

 **ro781727: I use my University experience to portray some teachers; it's closer to how I envision Hogwarts Professors than a high school instructor. As for Death Eaters, wait for it... :)**

 **The Viking Stranger: The recipe for disaster was missing a basic ingredient. Glad you added it now. Though it's less retarded than mad, for the convicts. Also, good guess for Harry.**

 **dragonblade3200: Honestly, I'd never thought about that - thanks for your suggestion! I've altered the title according to it, and changed the summary to better reflect the story as it is now.**

 **Disclaimer:** ** **You know the drill.** Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling, and I'm still penniless. :)**

 **...**

Screams were not unheard of during All Hallows' Eve. Given the number of pranks played, magical surprises awaiting unsuspecting customers in Hogsmeade's shops, and fake monsters, they could even be said to be natural. Usually however, they could not be described with words like 'blood-curdling' or 'terrified'. Identifying the girl that screamed -an older Hufflepuff student, from what Valeria could tell - wasn't that hard. Identifying the source of her terror was even easier, and once the five friends had done so they immediately wished they hadn't - except for Tracey, who nearly choked on her butterbeer.

They weren't the only people staring at the emaciated, shambling, grey-skinned, naked figures marching through the snow. Most observers didn't truly realize what they were seeing at first glance, and many assumed they were some kind of prank and paid them no more attention. Given all they'd been through over the past couple of years, Harry's friends knew they weren't lucky enough for that to be true. This was confirmed when the first approaching figure shambled close to a gaping older wizard and slammed him aside one-handed. The man flew twenty feet through the air and crashed into a nearby wall. He didn't get up. Shocked out of his temporary stupor, another observer realized the danger he was in and reacted as all wizards do.

 _"Stupefy! Slugulus Eructo! Diffindo!"_

The naked shambling thing ignored the barrage of spells as it got closer, the Stunner and the Slug-vomiting Curse having no effect and the Cutting Charm only making a three-inch cut that didn't even slow it down. It simply walked up to the now frantic wizard and disarmed him - by the simple expedient of ripping the man's wand arm out of its socket. For a couple of seconds everyone stood there transfixed. And then most people screamed, fell back, or both.

"Bloody hell!" shouted Ron, then threw a couple more Stunners and a Knockback Jinx at the leading creature. It only stumbled for a moment, then continued its inexorable advance. "What are these things?"

"Monumentally bad news." Daphne said, trying to freeze one of them solid, to no apparent effect. Neville and Tracey were still staring as more and more shambling figures appeared beyond the nearby buildings, entering Hogsmeade on their bare feet, despite the thin layer of snow and late October cold.

 _"Wingardium Leviosa!"_

"Oh come on!" Ron said as his Levitation Charm failed to affect its target as well. "Why doesn't anything work!?"

 _"Sonorus!"_ Valeria didn't waste any time with explanations. There was one thing they could do and unless it worked, everyone in the village would be dead in minutes.

INFERI! INFERI IN HOGSMEADE! FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES!

The horrendous attackers were indeed walking corpses and, as Daphne had said, this was monumentally bad news in more ways than one. For one thing, ninety percent of all curses and standard dueling spells wouldn't do squat against them as they mostly worked against the living. For another, being human bodies, they were beyond the skill of most wizards to Transfigure - a major advantage over animated objects. For the same reason, many Charms failed against them unless the caster was very powerful. And all that was before the Dark Wizard that animated them laid protective enchantments on them. The average Inferius was strong enough to reduce a wizard to a bloody smear on the ground, had comparable toughness, and wouldn't stop working even if hacked apart. But there was one weakness the Necromancy employed to animate an Inferius caused, rejecting protection against one means of attack.

 _"Incendio!"_

The small torrent of fire created by Valeria's spell arced thirty feet and hit the closest walking corpse head on, engulfing it in the same white-hot flames she'd used over a year ago to consume a Redcap. There was no way to enchant dead flesh against fire, which meant this should be... what the Hell? The shambling horror had waded through the flames entirely unharmed, and now it was close enough to see its empty eye sockets, the leathery skin tight over shriveled flesh as tough and unyielding as wood, lips drawn back in an eternal smile of yellowed teeth, the hear-hairless head that was only a mockery of the original human.

"Yep, it's official." Tracey finally found the words to describe their situation. "We're totally screwed."

The five of them turned around and fled.

 **...**

Hestia Jones was having a very good time before the walking dead totally ruined it. Dumbledore had asked her to stay in Hogsmeade for the day, watch out for suspicious activity and keep an eye on Harry Potter. For some reason though Potter had not shown up with the carriages from Hogwarts so the young would-be Hit Witch had decided to relax and have fun. Dark and dirty though the Hog's Head may be, its food and drinks both were awesome, and not many of its patrons would annoy her by asking her out. She already had a boyfriend, thank you very much, and if she hadn't managed to convince him to join her that day it was nobody's business but her own.

The magically amplified warning had almost caused her to drown in her own Firewhiskey. Most people would have believed it a stupid prank, but someone wanting to join the Hit Wizards had to keep an eye out for all kinds of danger - and Headmaster Dumbledore had been worried something bad might happen on Halloween for some reason. Thus she'd dropped everything, drawn her wand, and went out there looking for trouble.

The good news was that the trouble was in plain sight, easy to identify. The bad news was that there was no way she could take on several dozen Inferi on her own, the rest of the village being in a right state of panic and not in a position to help. More Inferi seemed to be arriving every moment, even as the bulk of the students ran for their lives. Hestia didn't know if they'd make it; over any sort of distance the tireless gait of the dead would outpace frantic living humans and it was nearly two miles to the castle. Making a hasty decision she'd probably regret later, she Disapparated.

There was a painful feeling of being squeezed through a too-long, too-narrow tube, and then Hestia collapsed in the middle of a large room full of separate cubicles and desks, a dozen people pointing their wands at her from all sides before she could blink.

"Trainee Jones, what the hell is this?" Auror Dawlish barked. "This is Auror headquarters, not Hit Wizard Academy, and you just Apparated directly here in violation of both protocol and law. Explain yourself!"

"H-Hogsmeade is under attack." She said, trying to think through the pounding headache the defensive enchantments had hit her with, meant to disable attackers rather than prevent them from arriving. "I-Inferi. Lots of t-them."

"Someone inform Kingsley, Scrimegour, and Madam Bones!" Auror Dawlish barked, wasting no time in useless questions. "You, you, and you, round up every Auror or Hit Wizard available within the next three minutes and prepare for mass deployment." Several junior Aurors left at a dead run, while others were sending magical messages. Auror Dawlish pulled her to her feet and Hestia gritted her teeth and concentrated, trying not to collapse. "How many Inferi are we talking about, trainee? What positions?"

"Well over a hundred, sir." She said, the headache receding as the enormity of the situation had adrenaline pumping through her veins. "Swarming down from the mountains. Point of entry to the village is next to the Three Broomsticks."

Auror Dawlish swore colorfully as several witches and wizards in robes lined with dragonhide, wands drawn and ready, potion-belts full of both battlefiled medicine and more dangerous concoctions, and each with a determined expression on their face marched into the room. "OK trainee, good job reporting this immediately. Now get the hell out of here and I'll forget your protocol violations."

"What?" This Hestia had not expected. "But sir! I want to help!"

"Of course you do." Dawlish said with a long-suffering expression. "That's why I'm sending you away from here. Do you have any idea what happened the last time we faced that many walking dead in the field?" He spat then talked over her intended reply. "Of course you don't, you don't remember the war as we do. Risking your life with your training unfinished is not an option, get it? I see you anywhere in that battlefield and you can forget about any carreer in law enforcement - your ass is grass. Now get out of my sight."

Hestia walked out of the room. When Auror Dawlish was like that, there was no changing his mind and she doubted the few more senior Aurors would have a different opinion. But she wanted to help! What else could she possibly do if not fight? She'd already warned the Aurors and... that was it! Why didn't she think of it before? With new purpose, she walked out of the restricted area then Disapparated.

She was going to warn Albus Dumbledore.

 **...**

"Another one! Kill it! Kill it!" Ron shouted as they ran from building to building, trying to avoid the main Inferi host. Five wands spat repeated Cutting Charms and in ten seconds yet another walking corpse had been reduced to pieces. Of course, the pieces were still moving.

"They're already dead, Ron." Valeria said with a scowl. She still had not gotten over that Inferius outright ignoring fire. From what she'd learned of Necromancy and Charms both, it should have been impossible. "They can't die again. How many hits to down this one you reckon, thirty?" She asked the others.

"More like forty-five." Daphne said, the one with the most Dueling experience out of their little group. "There's no way we're surviving if we draw any sort of attention. We can handle two or three, maybe even four, but any more and they'll close the distance before we can stop them." Ron nodded, agreeing with her dismal prediction.

"Great." Tracey snarked. "We can't make a run for it, we can't stop them, and we can't keep hiding because more of them are popping up every minute. How the Hell did the Death Eaters kill enough people to make so many of these things without the Ministry noticing?"

"There are easier ways of finding bodies than murder." Valeria mused. "They probably looted muggle graveyards. One of those can contain thousands of corpses. With a few good secrecy spells, a digging charm and a repair charm to restore each grave's outward appearance once you're done, no muggles would notice and the Ministry can't be checking every graveyard. Given enough time, they could have an army of thousands of corpses." At least that was how she'd have done it - if she ever wanted to make an undead army, that was. Personally, she found working with human corpses too disgusting to do something like that.

"Oh, Merlin, run!" Neville cried, pointing at a loose group of over a dozen undead shambling their way. That got them moving again.

It had only been a few minutes since the attack first begun and Hogsmeade was already in chaos. Many of the students had managed to flee immediately, before the Inferi had made a loose perimeter around the village and started working inwards. Many residents had elected to barricade themselves within their homes and establishments, while others had used the Floo to escape... until the supply of Floo Powder had run out with the majority of the vilalge's population and visitors left behind. Disapparition did not seem to be working any more, after the first few witches and wizards had fled that way: the Death Eaters must have erected an Anti-Disapparition Jinx. Since a couple of adults had arrived after that, Valeria believed apparating in still worked - it was only leaving that had been blocked. The better to make this a bloodbath, she supposed.

The most dangerous advantages Inferi had over animated objects was their endurance and partial independence while still following fully the directions of their creator. Unlike temporary animated objects, the creator didn't have to guide them directly, and unlike permanent ones they neither risked true independence nor did they require maintenance: they were perfectly capable of serving their master's directives for decades or even centuries. Which meant a Necromancer had no upper limit to how many of them he or she could create and have active at once. It looked like as if the Death Eaters' plan was to overwhelm Hogsmeade with numbers, but some of their tactics did not make sense. Why was there a perimeter, but no pursuit to get anyone that had already escaped? Why did the Inferi only attack those trying to fight or flee, not really bothering with those hiding, cowering, or forting up inside buildings?

Something was very wrong with this situation and while Valeria was happy to still have her life, she waited for the other shoe to drop. There was always a way things could become worse.

 **...**

Two dozen Aurors under the command of the Head of the DMLE, Amelia Bones herself, Disapparated from the Ministry of Magic as one and reappeared in a scene right out of their nightmares - nightmares of the past war. They immediately settled into a loose ring around their commander, raising shields and preparing to rain torrents of spellfire on their horrendous enemy.

"Morgana's tits, this is a total disaster if I ever saw one." Madam Bones said upon seein the scene of chaos. Her subordinates wisely did not contradict her, just as they hadn't when she'd made the "executive decision" to lead from the front lines on this one. "Right. Dawlish, our best in defense take up the shield ring and keep it running. Shacklebolt, everyone who's good in fire magic light those eyesores up. Scrimgeour, set up communications and start giving amplified directions to any civilians to keep their heads down and their wands out of our way. This is going to get nastier before it gets better, especially if any Death Eaters show up."

The most experienced Aurors and Hit-Wizards available on short notice settled in a well-practiced rhythm of spellcasting. They would take the Inferi as a unit, sweeping through Hogsmeade as nobody on British soil had done for over a decade. If they were lucky, the Inferi would be ash in all of five minutes and they would go home tonight knowing that they'd made a difference saving lives.

But they weren't going to be lucky.

 **...**

Harry flew down the secret passage, the Twins following closely behind him.

He'd been flying on his Nimbus when he'd noticed the stange activity around Hogsmeade, people running to and fro and flashes of multicolored light that weren't fireworks repeating with alarming frequency. Not trusting his eyes over that distance, he'd flown straight for the Astronomy tower. What he'd seen through the telescope had almost made him lose his breakfast. Zombies were swarming the village, as if out of some horror movie! Merlin, over half of the student body was there! Ron, Valeria, Neville, Daphne and Tracey! He had to do something.

Then the reality of the situation had sunk in. He couldn't go to Hogsmeade on his broom; the Dementors were in the way. Bloody Hell, the fleeing students couldn't get in either! Not without the Hogwarts carriages that would only go to get them back in the evening! Would they be knocked out by the Dementors only to be eaten by the zombies? Would the Dementors do to them something even worse?

He'd bumped into Fred and George upon entering the Gryffindor common room through the window. They noticed something was wrong with him and asked; he'd told them. They both went pale at hearing the words "zombies", "hundreds" and "Hogsmeade" in the same sentence. Unlike him though, they already had a plan for getting out of school and going to their little brother's rescue - and Harry could tag along if he could go back to the pitch to get a few more brooms.

That's how Harry found himself flying as fast as he could through an underground tunnel without risking an accident - and maybe a bit faster than that. A tunnel that, the Twins said, led straight to Hogsmeade. If they could find the others, get the extra brooms to them, maybe Ron and the others could fly out of reach of those horrible walking corpses...

 **...**

"We got the big one, all right." Anty said with satisfaction as he lowered the telescope. "Amelia Bones and two dozen Aurors. Standard ring formation, they're planning to burn out the Inferi."

"Excellent." Ruddy chortled. He always was happy when the Ministry's minions blundered into their deaths. "With any luck they'll be swarmed before they can work out a plan that will work."

"So..." Rabbi started, shifting nervously. "When are we going in? I mean..."

"We all know what you mean, Rabastan." Selwyn said with a smirk before turning to Bella. "Excellent plan, by the way. Hopefully the next phase will go as well."

"It will." Bella said decisively. "Mount your brooms. And for Merlin's sake, Rabbi, don't mix up the spells like you did in practice."

Her excitement mounted as their group of nine prepared to go out like in the old times. The Ministry would pay for locking them up and the Dark Lord would reward them as soon as he came back and they could present him with the fruit of their labors.

Blood would flow... and it would be delicious.

 **...**

"Hold the line! Hold the line!"

"Banishing Charms on my mark!"

"Where are the reinforcements!"

Kingsley Shacklebolt fought grimly to push back the Inferi that would not burn. The one plan the Ministry had to deal with such creatures had proven not only useless but costly; three of their number had fallen when the small force of Aurors believed themselves in the cusp of victory only to have their hopes gruesomely lost. Reductor and Blasting curses flew by the dozen but someone had been thorough in designing this trap. Their attempts to disintegrate the walking corpses only resulted in fist-sized holes blasted into them, hardly inconveniencing for those without living organs. Blasting them only resulted in throwing the things all over the place, only doing surface damage unless they concentrated their fire. And with the shambing attackers having gotten into melee range, they couldn't afford too powerful blasts lest they collapse their own shields. Even at a ten-to-one exchange rate, without reinforcements they'd be overrun before the enemy's numbers appreciably diminished.

Kingsley Shacklebolt hoped Dumbledore would arrive soon...

 **...**

"Are you out of your bloody mind?" Daphne shouted at the three boys that had come out of the Three Broomsticks. Harry, George, and Fred had come like gallant knights to the rescue, riding on brooms rather than horses, braving the chaos of Hogsmeade to find them. They'd swooped down from above, pelting the few Inferi in the area with Piercing and Cutting Charms, and an array of bottled concoctions that exploded, melted, or transfigured their victims into partial animal forms. Of course, that had drawn attention from a bigger contingent of Inferi, forcing the group to retreat away from their previous hiding place.

"...take the passage back to the castle?" the tall, silver-haired Slytherin witch berated them. "And have the Inferi follow us all the way there? Do you fancy fighting the walking dead in narrow corridors and classes, trying to prevent them from breaking into where the first and second years will be hiding?"

Valeria didn't pay the argument much attention. She was examining a half-melted, defunct Inferius. There was something... strange about its right hand... right there... was that a ring? Why would it still be wearing that, if its clothes had been removed? And why... if this were a muggle corpse... did the ring feel enchanted? She checked the other two Inferi; the one who'd been pierced magically so many times it could no longer more and the one who'd been partially exploded. Rings again... same hand, same finger, same design and aura... but what... Bloody hell, that was ingenious! Crude, but effective. And if...

"Hey Val, are you paying attention?" Daphne asked.

"Nope!" She answered, then laughed. "I'm too busy discovering why those things appear to be immune to fire."

"'Appear to be'?" Daphne asked, pale left eyebrow rising. "You mean they aren't actually fireproof?"

"Nope!" She said again. "It's impossible to enchant dead flesh against fire. What the Death Eaters did was to enchant rings to carry a Flame-Freezing Charm and then having the Inferi wear them. The enchantment is in the ring, not the Inferius, so there's less conflict with the Necromancy that animates them. Ingenious."

"Once you stop admiring them, could you please tell the rest of the class how that helps destroy them?" Tracey asked. "I for one would like to know."

"I don't think we can." Valeria replied. "We'd need a very strong fire spell to overwhelm the flame-freezing charm. One only an adult wizard could cast." Or maybe she could, too, if she fed enough emotion into the flames. Except that losing control of some cursed fire within Hogsmeade would be bad.

"I still don't understand why we can't fly away." Harry frowned. "We brought extra brooms and everything!"

"And then whoever set this little trap curses us as soon as we take off." Daphne said. "You think the Death Eaters are not here? As long as they get even a hint the Boy-Who-Lived is around, they'll make a beeline for us - and the Aurors are too busy fighting for their lives to help us."

"Right..." Harry said, then started thinking. All of them moved more carefully now, their larger group harder to hide. Luckily, the majority of the enemy seemed to be focused on the Aurors at the moment. "Right, new plan. Do you think we could help the Aurors?"

"You've finally lost it, Potter." Daphne huffed. "Your every new suggestion is more insane than the last. It'd take a small army to either break through the outer perimeter or get to the Aurors without making you a huge target."

"But what if we had an army?" Harry said to everyone's surprise. "Valeria, how many snakes do you think we could summon on short notice?"

"Dozens." She answered with a frown. "But I don't see how that would help."

"Not on its own, it wouldn't." The Boy-Who-Lived said. "But how many good Engorgement Charms could we cast in quick succession?"

 **...**

"Gotta say, boss." Dawlish said to Madam Bones as he blasted another Inferius back. "We're all goners now. Can barely handle the walking corpses as it is and look what's coming now."

Amelia couldn't disagree. Down Hogsmeade's main road was coming a bunch of the largest snakes she'd ever seen, each one twenty feet long or more, and about as thick as her torso. They slithered with abnormal speed and coordination, coming at where the line of Inferi had become thinnest. Having to reinforce the defense in that area would kill their offense and after that it would all be over except for the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Giant snakes, fire-immune Inferi; if less than a dozen escaped convicts could come up with all that, what would happen if a bigger enemy surfaced again? Not that she believed she'd survive long enough to see it.

Her surprise was total when the giant snakes hit the Inferi lines from behind, coiling around undead bodies and then crushing them, or simply toppling and tossing them aside. From behind a building, a group of what looked like Hogwarts students (!) came out and ran for the gap in the line, obviously intending to join her Aurors for protection. Impressive as they appeared, their snakes didn't seem to be faring that well against the walking dead - but she'd take even a momentary reprieve. Besides, those children looked like they'd come to them for help; she couldn't abandon her.

"Make an opening, Dawlish!" She commanded. "Let the kids inside, then reform the ring." The eight kids ran through the opening quickly but without hysterics, all with their wands at the ready. Cute.

"What the hell are you doing?" She asked sharply as she reinforced the shield. Defensive spells had always been her forte.

"Offering important intelligence, regent Bones." A tall, platinum-haired girl said. Amelia recognized the Greengrass scion of course, and her friend Davis. The shorter blonde she didn't know, the redheads had to be Weasleys and... Merlin's beard! Was that Harry Potter? The Boy-Who-Lived hissed something sharp and alien-sounding, and the group of snakes stopped trying to hold the opening. As one, they returned to trying to crush or disable the walking dead instead. Oh, right: the boy was a Parselmouth - she'd heard as much from Fudge.

"We discovered that the Inferi are wearing rings - rings enchanted with a Flame Freezing Charm." The Greengrass heiress continued. "That way the enchantment doesn't conflict with the animating Necromancy but as it is an outside source with the charm extending beyond the limits of the basic item..."

"...it is fragile." Amelia agreed. Basic OWL-level enchantment knowledge: if the spell extended beyond the focus item, you either needed a way to power it, or it faded after a given effect. If the kids were right... she had to test that. "Shacklebolt, focus some fire in an area. Hold it for fifteen seconds."

"Aye, ma'am." The tall, broad-shouldered black man pointed his wand and an intense torrent of flames splashed against a group of Inferi. For a few seconds nothing seemed to be happening, just like before. That had convinced them fire would be useless earlier: they couldn't afford to waste their efforts if a spell appearren ineffective. But at the ten second mark the walking corpses started to smoke, and three seconds later they'd been reduced to ashes. Several of the junion Aurors and Hit Wizards whooped in joy but she cut them off.

"Shut up, we're not out of danger yet." She nodded to Shacklebolt and Scrimgeour. "Forget comm and support for now. Focus everything on burning those things out while team one holds the defense. And for Merlin's sake, keep an eye on the kids."

It was slow going, but they now had the upper hand. The number of Inferi diminished as more and more of them fell to the flames. Amelia hoped they'd be done soon, the battle won, casualties surprisingly light. This had obviously been meant as a trap for them, the Inferi not caring much about wreacking havoc to the rest of Hogsmeade or hunting down the fleeing students. With good training and a great deal of luck, they'd overcome.

Naturally, that was when the Death Eater arrived.

 **...**

The lone figure in the black robes and skull-shaped mask advanced on the line of weary aurors on its own. Some would call it a suicidal tactic, but appearances could be deceiving. And no Death Eater had planned to die for the cause that day. No, they'd planned for the Aurors to die for theirs, in the words of a famous muggle politician.

"Did you come to surrender?" The Head of the DMLE asked, but the Death Eater didn't bother with useless words. It gestured with his wand and a half-dozen boulders, pieces of masonry, even an entire chimney, were ripped out of the surrounding area and hurled towards the Aurors with great force. Five of the targets shielded well enough for the impromptu missiles to shatter against their defenses; the sixth didn't... and got reveral jagged pieces of brick in the chest at enough speed to knock him out even through his dragon-skin-enhanced Auror robes.

Over a dozen Aurors returned fire, but the figure nimbly dodged most of the offensive spells. The four that would have found their mark were repelled by powerful shields. Losing no time, the figure slashed down with his wand and invisible blades slammed against an Auror's shield. The defensive charm deflected three, collapsed at the fourth, and its caster went down under the fifth, blood fanning out from his wounds.

The fight god ugly after that, the intensity of the spellfire redoubling. Amelia Bones could help; she was holding an area shield and an invisibility charm around both herself and the eight children. She had to protect them even as she saw the men and women under her command going down before hurled objects, invisible blades, crushing forces that smashed them against the ground, or spells that hurled them fifty feet in the air and then let them drop. The smug, silent bastard had not said a word yet. Perhaps he couldn't; fighting with that many Aurors, even tired after their fight with the Inferi, had to be taking its toll. But Merlin curse it if he wasn't fighting like few wizards she'd ever seen.

A concerted effort by three aurors that landed a powerful hex each finally managed to pierce the Death Eater's shield but the stunners that followed were all stopped by some inner defense. The Full-Body-Bind he managed to counter a mere second after it had immobilized him, and the conjured ropes of an Incarcerous spell he vanished outright. Someone tried a powerful Blasting Curse - an outright lethal attack - but a flick of his wand erected a weak Protego in the curse's path a mere five feet from the original caster. However weak, that distant shield caused the curse to detonate prematurely, severely wounding the Junior Auror that had cast it in the process. Only five Aurors were still standing, counting Amelia herself. Shacklebolt, Dawlish, and Scrimgeour had lasted as long too, but they didn't look good. The Death Eater knew they couldn't take him now - or was it her? Was Bellatrix hiding behind that mask? - so he raised his wand, ready to finish the battle... but was interrupted.

Amid a flash of fire, a tall wizard in magenta robes and with long, silvery hair and beard arrived in the battlefield, a shining red Phoenix on his shoulder.

"I have been somewhat delayed due to unforeseen... administrative matters." He said, glancing towards Amelia and the eight children still invisible by her side. "No matter, I am here now. I hope I'm not too late to join the party?"

Albus Dumbledore had finally arrived.


	56. Administrative Matters

**Mari Clair Rosemajji Celts: Let's hope this chapter satisfies you then.**

 **Slytherin's Strumpet: Then you'd love this one even more.**

 **ro781727: Gawain Robards. As for Bella, she managed to block a spell from Dumbledore, beat Tonks, Kingsley, and Sirius in the same battle, and did all that after over fourteen years of wasting in Azkaban. She's powerful - but not powerful enough to take Dumbledore in any sort of duel. Since Voldemort managed to win over McGonagal, Slughorn and Kingsley simultaneously, I'd say he and Dumbledore were about three times as powerful as the most powerful other witches and wizards in Britain, Bellatrix, Flitwick, and Mrs. Weasley being slightly stronger than others at that level.**

 **Serpentine13: glad you liked it.**

 **Urazz: Yep, good points.**

 **StevenG: All explained below.**

 **ReBein: Thanks!**

 **The Viking Stranger: Dunno about awesome showdown but hopefully it will be a good fight.**

 **Disclaimer: This chapter took longer to write because it was 5000 words long. Any delays due to the Greek elections were entirely coincidental.**

 **Disclaimer II: Did the Weasley Twins manage an order of five hundred enchanted objects for the Ministry while still running a major shop in Diagon Alley after only months of leaving Hogwarts? If yes, Harry Potter does not belong to me. It belongs to JK Rowling and this story is entirely zero-profit writing for fun.**

 **...**

Albus Dumbledore was enjoying his morning tea and lemon drops, reading that morning's Daily Prophet and making contacts with his various informants and spies through indirect, hidden channels in preparation for the day's festivities. All Hallow's Eve was a magically important holiday, wild magic stretching coincidence so events thematically associated with the day tended to happen during it more often than not. The association had certainly been proven correct many times during his tenure as Headmaster and his efforts every year were put into predicting such disasters and either averting or controlling them.

This time though, all his contacts had turned up nothing major - only fairly innocuous events that did not require intervention. Odd, that was. With ten Death Eaters having the run of the country and so many Dementors stationed around Hogwarts, he'd expected something horrible to happen. He had definitely not agreed with the presence of those soul-sucking creatures, and for a good reason. Nobody knew what happened to an individual consumed by a Dementor. Wizardkind had several ways through which to record a soul's passage into the Great Beyond, not the least of which were the personality records provided through magical portraits, and the creation of ghosts. The fate awaiting those suffering the Dementor's Kiss allowed for neither, indicating that no passage to a final reward happened. Were the victims' souls obliterated, or did they get to suffer eternally within a monstrous prison? Either would be horrible beyond imagination, and the last thing Dumbledore wanted was one of his students to fall victim to the guards of Azkaban.

The Headmaster's dark thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of one of the school owls, carrying a simple, unsigned letter. His interest piqued, Dumbledore unfolded the envelope after casting the magic and poison detection spells common sense required, and read the impersonal, mechanically repeating script that indicated either a muggle printing device or a Dictaquill.

 _Grand Sorcerer, Supreme Mugwump of the Wizengamot, Headmaster of Hogwarts, greetings and salutations._

 _We're writing to inform you of a great party in Hogsmeade that will begin at 11:47 sharp. Other expected arrivals include half the student body of Hogwarts, the residents of Hogsmeade, twenty-six Aurors and Hitwizards, the head of the DMLE, and several hundred Inferi. Party crashers will include one (1) rather competent Death Eater with grossly indecent designs towards visiting dignitaries, ranging from Backgammon to murder. Should you be interested in the position of bouncer, your arrival is expected at no later than 12:21. Illegal magical items, such as rings that render Inferi temporarily fireproof, will be found and accounted for. The Astronomy tower's telescopes can be used to both observe the action and watch out for possible attacks on Hogwarts - an assortment of Honeydukes' products will be provided to any observers free of charge. The position of the remaining Death Eaters is unknown to the sender of this letter at this time - high possibility of diversionary tactics._

 _PS: Dementors are not invited._

 _PPS: How many points am I getting for this?_

Sighing, the Headmaster of Hogwarts put down his teacup, put on his hat, and sent messages to the teachers through the portrait network to meet him in the Astronomy tower. It was going to be one of those days.

 **...**

The prisoner threw up his best mental defenses as another tormenting line of words battered its way into his thoughts, letters written in flame. Not for the last time, he wanted to scream... but he could not. His predicament did not include a working mouth.

Turnaround is fair play, they say. In the deepest, darkest corners of his mind, the only safe place he had left, the prisoner laughed at the idea. He had tortured and been tortured in his day. He had killed, too. But nothing he'd ever experienced, nothing others had experienced because of him, could hold a candle to the unearthly, blinding, searing line of words forcefully shoved into his thoughts. Not so much because of the intensity, but because of the duration.

How long had it been? It had felt like centuries, certainly, but it was not. Incorporated into his torture was its length, the only fact of the outside world he had access to by design. No sight, no hearing, no smell or taste, not even touch; no outside senses had he been allowed... for several months now. No sleep, no rest, no sustenance, just endless hours of words craved by a quill as sharp as a sword. The only brief respite he was afforded came when the quill had to shift to a different repository of words, a half-minute of an unseen, tireless writer shifting between books.

The prisoner had not devolved into madness, relieving though that might have been. He was not so arrogant to believe that was solely because of his mental prowess - not anymore. The bonds put upon him would not allow escape, not even into madness. Into a broken man eager to please a new master, perhaps, but never to any form of true escape. His punishment would last as long as he did, or until his jailor changed their mind. In his darkest moments the prisoner wondered whether his current predicament would become his ultimate fate. If those responsible for his horrendous imprisonment would throw away the key and forget he'd ever existed.

In those moments, the prisoner cried out for death, oblivion. That would have been, at least, a release.

 **...**

Sirius Black had arrived in Hogwarts, his first-ever true home. Within the castle's ancient walls lay his objective; of that he was certain. All he had to do was reach it.

Upon seeing the blackened ruins of the Dursleys' home nearly three months ago, he'd been devastated. That was the only place he knew of where his godson could have been sent to grow away from the wizarding world - something he must have done if his decade-long disappearance was any indication. The very thorough destruction of the place had been a deliberate act, and the only people Sirius knew of who could have done it were his deranged cousin and her band of merry madmen.

Weeks of dismal survival and no news later, after much wailing and only occasionally eating from a dustbin, he'd had an epiphany. The sudden death of the Boy-Who-Lived would never have been left out of the papers, and his disappearance would have had Dumbledore and the Ministry moving heaven and earth to retrieve him. That there had been no news could only be good news; Harry must have somehow been away when Number 4 Privet Drive burned to the ground. And if that was true, then he could be found in Hogwarts now that the school year had begun.

Unfortunately if Sirius could work this out while being sorry for himself in his dog form, then his cousin could certainly do so as well. Deranged she might be, but she was also brilliant... and skilled enough to become a major problem. From what Sirius knew of her capture, the Aurors had only gotten her because she and her despicable friends had been too distracted by the loss of their master. With nothing to lose now, the nine escaped Death Eaters could cause a lot of damage before the Ministry could put them down. What if they decided to attack Hogwarts? Dumbledore could certainly stop them, but what if they caught his godson in the open, or if they fired blindly upon the castle in the middle of the night? Sirius' worst nightmare was Gryffindor Tower, one of the most prominent fixtures of the castle and easy to find from the outside, being reduced to molten slag by a couple quick castings of Fiendfyre hurled at its base.

Operation: Hogwarts Invasion was a go. He was the last of the Maurauders, a group of troublemakers who'd prided themselves of being able to sneak into and out of anywhere. He had only a month till Halloween, the first major holiday when the castle would be in chaos and its defenses at its lowest. He would observe and plan and, at the right time, infiltrate. The first Hogsmeade weekend would be of great help. Dumbledore had made the hard decision to send Harry away from the wizarding world for his own safety; he would never let his godson go to Hogsmeade while the Death Eaters were still at large. Sirius would be in Gryffindor Tower at the 31st of October. Nobody would hurt his godson again.

 **...**

"Are you sure about this, Albus?" Minerva McGonagall asked, wringing her hands. The Headmaster had called for a meeting at the top of the Astronomy tower only a few minutes earlier. When they'd arrived, they'd found him already erecting protective enchantments at a frenetic pace, raising barriers against intrusion by dark wizards, against hostile spells, against imminent harm, against approach without permission by land, air, or magical means, and several others she could not identify.

"My informant is quite reliable, Minerva." The powerful wizard answered as he erected barriers against physical force jointly with Filius Flitwick now. "There will be a Death Eater attack today so we must be ready."

"I suppose this informant of yours was also responsible for the catering?" Severus asked sarcastically, prodding a bag of Chocolate Frogs with one foot, his expression matching those of Pomona's students when they had to mix dragon dung to make magical fertilizer.

"Of course they are, Severus!" Dumbledore answered with a gleam in his eyes. "And I daresay they've done an excellent job. We've been given everything we'd need for an early dinner while we stand our vigil, don't you think?"

"If we were five and in dire need of a sugar rush, certainly." Severus sneered. "Perhaps we should send for some cold sandwiches from the kitchens. Anything would be better than... this." He pointed at the small mountain of sweets once more. Nobody managed to correct him though; that was when the first explosion pressed against their defenses.

 **...**

"Come on boys!" Bella shouted to the other escapees trailing her. "Bombs away!" Cackling, she turned over her bag, opening pointing at the castle below. Eight Death Eaters followed her example, raining death from above.

The Dementors were the first and potentially the greatest obstacle against any attack they could launch against Hogwarts. They were all dark witches and wizards, having fully embraced pain and destruction in their master's service. As such, they might be less affected by and more quick to ally with the soul-sucking fiends, but had also lost the ability to produce a Patronus of any strength. The Dark Lord might be one with the darkness to such an extent that the Dementors would follow him without question when he returned at full power, but they were not. That was the reason the Ministry had such faith in the Dementors being able to win against most any dark wizard while still remaining under its control, after all.

They'd been discarding plans and ideas for over a week when Juggy, after getting pissed on an entire stolen bottle of Firewhiskey, had started one of the old war stories from Grindelwald's time. It was about the bombing of London and how many muggles had been blown up because they couldn't put simple cushioning and bouncing charms over their houses. Bella had immediately found the hidden gem of an idea amid the rest of the silly story: they didn't need to get inside the castle grounds in order to attack Hogwarts, and as they only needed to divert Dumbledore's attention briefly...

If there was one thing every wizard could do, even first year students on their first day, it was making things explode. Even simple charms and potions could become bombs if cast in the wrong -or right- way. The nine Death Eaters had a long time to prepare and had been given wands by their unknown benefactor. One empty bottle could become hundreds through the Geminio Charm. Enter simplistic potions brewed to explode, paper bags with expansion charms cast on them, the brooms provided by Selwyn, and the Disillusionment charm, and their diversion was ready. Besides, flying over a mile above Hogwarts, beyond the range of its defensive enchantments or the Dementors' senses, invisible to visual observation, and dropping dozens of makeshift magical explosives... felt awesome, really. Maybe they'd get to repeat it many times over once the Dark Lord returned as he'd promised.

Hundreds of explosions flared against a previously invisible shield surrounding the castle. Bella pouted as last night's vivid dream of a broken and burning castle was averted by defensive spells the old goat must have cast. She hated that man. For opposing the Dark Lord, for being responsible for the disgraceful decline of their traditions, for his protection of muggles... For refusing her the position of Head Girl despite her having the best marks of any student for nearly two decades. But there would be a reckoning one day, oh yes - and soon.

For now, it was enough that she'd put some extra time into giving this diversion a second phase just in case. She took the second bag hanging from her belt and emptied it too over the castle. Then she pulled at the disillusioned, unbreakable, very long rubber string Selwyn had conjured and bound their broomsticks with so they wouldn't be lost or scattered while flying invisible.

"Come on, boys. Distraction delivered." She pointed her broom towards Hogsmeade and cackled in glee. "It is time we deliver some destruction too."

 **...**

"Merlin's beard!" Filius Flitwick exclaimed in his too-high-pitched voice as the rain of explosions subsided. "If we hadn't raised that shield in time..."

"It would have been terrible." Pomona Sprout agreed, wringing her hands. She gave Dumbledore a strained smile. "But thanks to your foresight Albus we - OUCH!"

"Pomona, what is it?" All of them worriedly turned to her, seeing her rubbing her shoulder.

"Nothing... I think... something... hit me..." Then the lovable and ever-cheerful Head of Hufflepuff collapsed where she stood. Alarmed, everyone just started looking for what was wrong, where and how she'd been wounded... except for Filius and Albus. The two of them immediately started casting revealing spells and looking for anything out of the ordinary. It was Flitwick that found it first.

"There!" He said harshly, casting an anti-invisibility charm at a seemingly empty stone tile not very far from his fallen friend. A small stone faded into visibility, a piece of granite with sharp edges. Under his magic-revealing spell, it glowed with an unbreakable charm... and a strong delayed curse.

"A cursed projectile. Ingenious." Dumbledore mused, gleaming eyes staring into nowhere. "It crossed our hastily raised defenses because it didn't register as capable of sufficient harm - the curse activated only on contact. And with that much harmful magic thrown at us it would be easy to pass unnoticed."

"I don't care how it got here, Albus!" Filius said sharply. Now was not the time to applaud their enemy's inventiveness! "We get rid of it now and praise our luck it was aimed at us and not thrown somewhere students could stumble into it. Invisible cursed objects - what else will the Death Eaters come up!"

"A bit soon to praise our luck, I'm afraid." The Headmaster shook his head sadly. "A quick check of the dark object detection enchantments just told me it was not the only one."

"Merlin's shriveled bits!" Filius cursed colorfully, his goblin roots not far from the surface at times like these. "How many invisible death traps do we have to deal with then?"

"One thousand, five hundred and eighty-seven." Dumbledore said somberly.

 **...**

The dog was running through one of the secret passages when the thundering of spellfire could be heard even under several feet of stone. Hogwarts was under attack! Sirius redoubled his efforts, finding a bit more speed in his malnourished limbs. He had to reach his godson before it was too late! He had to!

 **...**

"...and then we scan the place the map indicates." Remus Lupin said, handing over several charmed parchments to his colleagues.

"Excellent work, Remus." Dumbledore said, scanning the crude map of Hogwarts on which hundreds of tiny red dots gleamed sinisterly. "Putting the detection charms on maps for easier reference is a brilliant idea I'm not sure I've seen used before. Drawing a simple yet accurate sketch of Hogwarts on short notice is impressive as well. It will make your job so much easier."

"You're not joining us Albus?" Minerva asked, voice and eyebrows rising in surprise.

"I'm afraid I have prior appointments..." the Headmaster demurred, checking a watch with twelve hands and no numbers. "Do you think you could find and disable the cursed objects in about three hours? The students will need to return from Hogsmeade by then - for their own safety."

"Three hours?!" Flitwick squeaked. "We won't even have time to walk to every object, let alone retrieve or dispel them!" He certainly couldn't, with those short legs of his.

"Why don't we use brooms?" Rolanda Hooch suggested. "We'd get to them much faster, even if they were in remote areas."

"I see no need to reveal, dispel, or retrieve those objects." Severus said. "They're crude, hastily cursed and charmed stones of no value of note. A magic-revealing charm followed by a Reducto curse on the locations the maps show us..." even now he refused to speak to Remus directly "...and they'll be gone."

"An excellent plan." The Headmaster agreed. "Do send my regards to Pomona if Poppy restores her before my return, will you?" And with a twin flash of fire, he was gone.

"Where do you think he's going?" Septima asked and Filius and Severus both shrugged. The comings and goings of the Headmaster had often been a mystery to them.

"He's gone to Hogsmeade." Aurora said through gritted teeth, a hardness in her voice they hadn't heard before. They all turned to see her looking through one of the telescopes. It was turned towards the only all-magical village in Britain and from their colleague's grim expression, nothing good was going on there. "Hogsmeade is under attack and despite a strong Auror presence, things have gone... poorly."

"How poorly?" Minerva asked once they'd all gone over their shock at that piece of news.

"Only four Aurors out of two dozen are still standing." came the grim reply.

 **...**

Valeria was staring at the duel in progress, jaw gaping. She wasn't the only one: everyone in the vicinity of the two wizards was watching with awed incredulity, including the Head of the DMLE. The only ones not doing so were the still-standing Aurors providing needed first-aid to their fallen comrades, and the few remaining Inferi shambling to and fro aimlessly.

Dumbledore parried half a dozen invisible blades attempting to shred him to bits with a single shield, then conjured a similar number of stone statues, animated them, and sent them against the enemy - all with the same flick of his wand! The Death Eater was no slouch either. A wide gesture of his own focus had half the statues vanishing in mid-motion, the other half levitated and hurled against his opponent, only to shatter against another shield.

Dumbledore vanished, reappeared behind his foe, flicked his wand once, and hurled a bolt of golden light as bright as the sun and as thick as Valeria's torso. With incredible reflexes and seemingly no need to see his opponent to know where he was, the Death Eater turned on a dime and pointed his own wand sharply as soon as Dumbledore had Disapparated. For a split second there was no visible effect until Dumbledore's spell -whatever it was- crashed through a series of shields with the clang of a half-dozen gongs. None of them were powerful enough to stop it, but the bolt expended energy to pierce each one until the Death Eater finally blocked it.

Dumbledore Disapparated again - how many times did that make? Fifteen in under a minute, with an exchange of spells in between? Valeria's vision was beginning to swim from the dozens of rapid-fire flashes of spellfire. For once though, the Death Eater pulled off an attack before Dumbledore could. Every loose object in a hundred-yard radius, from stones, to broken masonry, to shredded Halloween decorations, to half-burned Inferi remains rose as one, as if from a dozen castings of an Offensive Animation Jinx, and hurled themselves at Dumbledore. Raising his wand, the Grand Sorcerer surrounded himself with a shimmering white shield. Every object that crossed it was instantly transfigured to fine (and harmless) powder.

Dumbledore retaliated with Conjuration. A flick of his wand brought into being several hundred chains. A second animated them, hurling them in a wave at the lone Death Eater. Not even attempting to vanish or otherwise transfigure them, the dark wizard brought his own wand down sharply and a wave of concussive force hurled everything away from him, chains, rubble, and all. Faced with hundreds of conjured objects when many adult wizards could not manage a single one, he'd simply cast an area Banishing Charm strong enough to be the equivalent of a bomb. Conjured chains and rubble alike became deadly projectiles and Valeria was very happy she and her friends had stayed behind the defenses cast by the Head of the DMLE.

"Oh man, this is awesome." Ron said as Dumbledore threw a continuous bolt of lightning which the Death Eater held at bay with invisible shields. "Who do you think is winning?"

"For our own continued safety young man, you better hope it is Dumbledore." Amelia Bones said testily. "Invisibility is all well and good until someone sweeps the area with Fiendfyre, or Blasting Curses at the intensity those two are capable of. As soon as Shacklebolt, Scrimgeour, Dawlish, and Robards have the wounded secure, we're all getting out of here."

"That's odd." Daphne said as another barrage of invisible blades clanged against Dumbledore's defenses, the magic not caught by the Headmaster's shield cutting into the building behind him. "Neither of them is using Unforgivables."

"Your father is an excellent duelist, Scion Greengrass, but you're far from being as good yet." The Head of the DMLE snorted as Dumbledore and the Death Eater exchanged invisible blows that could level buildings. "The Unforgivables need a fair bit of magic behind them to work and have to be said out loud. Unless the caster is extremely proficient with them, they'd take too long for a high-speed duel, shield-piercing ability or not."

"Who is that Death Eater?" Harry asked with a frown. "I thought Dumbledore was the greatest wizard alive and Voldemort-" Amelia Bones hissed while Valeria rolled her eyes "-isn't available to fight him. Who else is that good?"

"Headmaster Dumbledore is fighting at a disadvantage, Potter." The Head of the DMLE said as piles of rubble took humanoid forms and launched themselves at the Death Eater. Cutting Curses and Banishing Charms stopped them momentarily but as they were loose matter to begin with, they couldn't be damaged so easily; they quickly reformed and continued their advance and the Death Eater had to resort to Vanishing or directly trying to counterspell Dumbledore's animation charms. "The enemy is using spells with no visual components and there are far too many noncombatants around. He can't risk dodging and letting an enemy attack level an occupied building, he can't use attacks his enemy could dodge for the same reason, and he must keep the enemy's attention to himself." Amelia Bones snarled nastily. "Even so, he's still winning. Once that bastard is tied down for good, it'll be the Dementor's Kiss. I lost three good men today."

The Head of the DMLE was right. The Death Eater was now launching invisible attacks - cutting and piercing curses and banishers mostly - at a frenetic pace, faster than Valeria could count, but the Headmaster was managing to counter them all and was slowly pushing the powerful Dark Wizard back. The Slytherin girl looked uncertainly left and right, searching the ruined village and smoke-filled skies for even a hint of a black robe or skull-faced mask. Now was the perfect time for the other Death Eaters to turn up and curse Dumbledore in the back. With their most powerful member holding the Grand Sorcerer's attention, they might even get away with it.

Was killing Dumbledore their plan all along?

 **...**

Hestia Jones had finally reached Hogwarts. Her arrival had been momentarily delayed by the extra defensive enchantments erected around the castle, a bubble of protective magic so strong as to be visible to the naked eye. The castle had been put into lockdown! Had some sort of attack happened here too? She didn't know and had no time to find out; Hogsmeade was being overrun by Inferi and possibly Death Eaters at the moment and the Aurors would need all the help they could get. Prick or not, Dawlish did not deserve to get horribly killed while defending children and civilians.

Luckily, the passwords Professor Dumbledore had given her worked for the extra enchantments as well. She hurried into the castle at a dead run, through the main entrance and through many corridors and staircases left curiously empty. Oh Merlin, an attack must really have happened! The younger students had to be locked in their dormitories, the Prefects and older students gathered in the common rooms as a last line of defense. The Professors had to be fighting at that very moment! Hestia paused to think whether going to the Headmaster's office was still a good idea, given this turn of events. Wouldn't Professor Dumbledore be at the front lines as well? Most probably - but she could not be certain. She didn't even know where the fighting was taking place - the castle was so silent. At least the portraits in the Headmaster's office could give her better directions.

So preoccupied was she as she continued her climb that she didn't notice the massive, shaggy, black dog coming from around a corner until she bumped into it. She only had time to exclaim "Oh Merlin! A Grim!" before both she and the very large canine tumbled down several flights of stairs. The less famous of the Jones sisters slammed head-first into the stone floor after a sixty-foot tumble and darkness took her.

 **...**

"That does it." Selwyn said from Bella's right, the two of them directing and supporting the Death Eaters' efforts from inside the Area Invisibility Charm. "It was an excellent plan but we are all still rusty after Azkaban and Dumbledore is too damn good."

"Not yet." Bella said as the lone figure in black robes and skull-faced mask a hundred feet below them was finally bound in too many chains to move. "There's one more trick left."

"Give up while we're still ahead, Bella." Selwyn cautioned, the other seven Death Eaters on brooms behind them panting after having to cast so many combat spells in quick succession and high coordination while still recovering from the effects of Azkaban. "Any time now Dumbledore will notice that down there is only an animated puppet, realize why we've only been using spells with invisible effects, then pierce our secrecy charms in two seconds flat. I, for one would not like to return to Azkaban."

"Oh ye of little faith." Bella said, cancelling the shrinking charm in one of the trinkets she'd recently prepared. What at first glance appeared to be a crude necklace grew to its full size, revealing itself as a large barrel hanging easily from the delicate chain around Bella's neck thanks to a featherweight charm. Then Bella cast a powerful Switching Spell she'd learned all the way back in her third year.

 **...**

Albus Dumbledore sighed when his enemy was finally bound and disabled. It had been an excellent duel and at any other time he'd have enjoyed the creative -and extremely quick- exchange of magic. Not in the middle of a damaged Hogsmeade though, a few Inferi still randomly shambling through its streets, its terrified residents cowering in their own houses and shops, his students pale and shaking by all that they'd witnessed. Elder Wand still at the ready against one last trick, he approached his captive warily and yet sadly. Who was behind that skull-shaped mask? What wizard -or maybe witch- had given up such a bright future, wasting his or her talents serving an insane goal?

He would not get an answer that day. The bound figure shimmered and vanished, a barrel appearing in its place. Albus Dumbledore only had time to raise his wand and begin casting before nearly a thousand pounds of magical explosive mixture, more powerful than any conventional explosive, blew up in his face.


	57. Business as Usual

**Mari Clair Rosemaji Celts: Almost all the magic used in the story is canon, spells-wise. There is a very large number of spells, potions and magical effects that can be found in various Potterverse-related sites gathering all the canon facts. Where I am extrapolating is when information about an existing magic is missing, such as incantations of some spells, or how Alchemy or a ritual works - in which case I use ideas from real-world beliefs in magic, numerology, and linguistics. So far, I have not had my characters invent something new - but it will probably happen once they start playing with spellcrafting and rituals in years to come.**

 **ro781727/lightning king: Yeah, Albus is only one of two wizards to have ever beaten a powerful opponent wileding the Elder Wand in a fair duel and has been practicing magic for over a hundred years. As for the Hogsmeade events' impact to our young heroes, this is what this chapter is about.**

 **The Viking Stranger: Not mini-nuke. Maybe a really big conventional bomb/missile. There are magics that could get into WMD territory but we'll probably not be seeing those till next year at the earliest.**

 **Urazz: The aftermath is mostly glossed over as bogging down the story would make it huge. We're 14 chapters into the 3rd year and barely three months went by - I need to pick up the pace.**

 **httpkirby: Muggleborn Slytherin - Malfoy trouble - Diary sent to her rather than Ginny - Learns and releases the Dark Wanker's secrets in public - some people really don't like it - imprisoned Death Eaters get support - escaped Death Eaters are led by insane but powerful witch - crazy plan of shock, awe, and zombies is carried out. And Dumbedore was all calm and friendly when facing Voldemort himself in the middle of the Ministry; of course he would joke before the Death Eater(s).**

 **Eliana34: Because it diverts from the original plot? Every diversion is a fairly straightforward result of the single change to one character. Hermione was not an innocent in the original - she'd assaulted teachers, arranged teachers to be potentially kiled, brewed illegal NEWT-level potions, potioned and cursed students, violated the laws of Time, blackmailed reporters, robbed banks, cast Unforgivables and so on and so forth. Add a big dose of Slytherin ambition instead of a sense of social justice, and things get interesting.**

 **Serpentine13: Inspiration? Yes. Motivation? Yes. The ability to replicate spells beyond what the vast majority of wizards can do? The kids still got several years of learning to do.**

 **Disclaimer: Were Inferi at the same level of interesting and scary as Dementors, and yet used in only one encounter in the original books? If yes, Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling. I am merely an avid fan in her playground.**

 **...**

"Weasley, you're daydreaming again." Daphne commented about an hour in their latest study session. With most extracurricular activities suspended and the castle's security significantly increased due to recent events, they'd decided to catch up on homework, required reading, and research. Magic school or not, the boring parts of education were the same, Valeria mused.

"It was something, wasn't it?" The redhead Gryffindor said with a dreamy expression. "The duel I mean. A dark wizard that could wipe the floor with a whole bunch of Aurors and Dumbledore won easily! I wonder if we'll ever get as good."

"You certainly won't, Weasley." Daphne said caustically. Of them all, she was the most annoyed with the singular point of interest the entire school had focused on over the past few days. As the only witnesses that had seen everything from start to finish, they'd been the focus of a great deal of attention and despite slowly maturing socially, the Slytherin Ice Princess was definitely uncomfortable interacting with crowds. "Keep your head in the clouds like that instead of studying and you'll even forget what you've already learned - a typical achievement for a Gryffindor, I am sure." Then again, the pureblood scion might have other reasons to be annoyed, reasons similar to Valeria's own perhaps? Both Slytherin girls prided themselves on their magical knowledge, and their inability to understand the magic used by the two combatants even after pooling their skills did not sit well with them. After several days of Daphne becoming more and more irritable and Valeria's head not coming up from the books she was reading unless absolutely necessary, even Tracey had started keeping her distance.

"Can we please not fight again?" Harry interrupted. As the group's members became more and more stressed he'd become the voice of reason, possessing seemingly endless patience despite their having to stay cooped up in the castle day after day. "It's not getting us anywhere and after Dumbledore narrowly managing to keep the Ministry's interrogators away from us, I'd rather not draw any more attention." Fat chance of that, Valeria thought. They'd helped a group of Aurors led by the Head of the DMLE herself. Dumbledore's presence and actions may have kept the media and any official summons away from them but she'd bet one of her rarest books that someone, in some obscure department of the Ministry, was keeping tabs on the Boy-Who-Lived and its use of Parseltongue in a magical battle, however small their part in the Hogsmeade Skirmish was being presented as.

"Come on, mate!" Ron complained. "Everybody saw how awesome Dumbledore was back there! He even conjured a huge wall of iron in the split second he had before that Death Eater blew up and saved all our lives! So why is she-" he pointed at Daphne with his off hand "-on my case about it? Can't I be impressed about the greatest wizard of our age using such awesome battle transfiguration?" Daphne glowered at the boy and Valeria winced. Many Slytherins didn't like being reminded of the 'great' Albus Dumbledore's achievements, mainly because the Headmaster was biased against their House, most pureblood families, and their ideology in general. Valeria liked to believe her reasons for it were a bit more practical - the ancient wizard's meddling caused quite a bit of harm in her opinion - but even she would admit her distaste might not be entirely objective. Right before she Obliviated whoever had wormed such a confession out of her, of course.

"We can be impressed without being obsessed about it, Ron." Valeria lied in as calm a voice as she could manage. It was better to avoid a scene. Several other students had already gathered in their little corner of the library already, surreptitiously watching them from behind stacks of books, from within lightless alcoves, or by claiming their own desks and pretending interest in their own reading material. "And we're trying to learn from it." She indicated the dozen or so books she and Daphne had gone through. Her stack mainly focused on animation and force-based charms with a bit of elementalism, while Daphne had been reading up on advanced shield spells and various curses with no visible effects. Despite many long, grueling sessions however, Valeria had failed to find Dumbledore's golden beam spell and nowhere in Daphne's stack had they found a way to create multiple defensive or offensive effects at once - and the others knew it.

"Right." Ron said dubiously. "I suppose all this reading has helped you conjure shields and soldier-statues like Dumbledore did? Let's see it then."

Annoyed with Ron's challenge, their failures, and the world in general, both young witches drew their wands and cast, trying to shut the mig-mouthed idiot once and for all. At the tip of Daphne's wand a small clay tile faded into existence, flickered for a few seconds, then disappeared with a light pop like a burst soap bubble. Valeria's effort produced a tile of similar size, but dark red in color. It looked stabler than Daphne's, even if none of them could tell what it was made of, until its color became brighter and brighter and it sublimated in a tiny tongue of flame.

Ron laughed as the two Slytherin girls stared at yet another failure with near-identical angry expressions. Wordlessly, Daphne packed up her things and left without a word. Tracey, who'd silently watched the argument growing till then, got up as well and followed her oldest friend.

"What the hell, Ron?" Valeria hissed at the redhead as Neville hid behind his own stack of books and Harry sighed in exasperation. "Do you have the emotional depth of a teaspoon, or are you a jerk by choice?"

"Turnaround's a bitch, huh?" The boy had the temerity to say, apparently pleased with himself. "At least your pet didn't end up permanently pink - oh wait! You don't have one. Guess it wouldn't survive the snakes in your common room."

Resisting the impulse of seriously hexing the idiot and getting a permanent ban from the library for her troubles, she gathered her things and followed her housemates. Wondering whether Ron had deliberately and successfully goaded her into this as revenge for their first encounter in the Hogwarts Express over two years ago would have to wait for another day.

 **...**

"Flint, Malfoy is annoying me." she said without looking up from her latest experiment. The seventh year boy looked up from his stack of NEWT-level books and notes and stared at a small group of third-years at the other end of the room. The blonde dandy that was their apparent leader happily obliged and conjured another tiny garter snake, then banished it towards Valeria. Pansy Parkinson and Lillian Moon giggled approvingly.

"So he is." Flint shrugged. "What of it?"

"I've been going through the semantic and arithmantic analysis of a difficult bit of magic and all he's been doing for the past half hour was try and get a summoned snake down my shirt." A bit of anger showed through her indifferent facade as Malfoy's latest attempt wriggled in her lap, then faded as the summoning was dismissed. "Make your Seeker behave, will you?"

"You're a big girl, Campbell. Stop him yourself." The older boy answered fake indifference with fake indifference. They both knew she couldn''t retaliate as long as Malfoy's attempts remailed largely harmless. Getting into more trouble after the events in Hogsmeade was not a good idea and Professor Snape was unlikely to step in for simple -if annoying- pranking. "Why should I care about it anyway?"

"He is your Seeker, isn't he?" She said sweetly then glowered at Malfoy as the next snake fell right on her calculations, smudging the ink. The other Slytherin third year raised both hands in mock innocence, while his sycophants giggled again - Grabbe and Goyle included. "You don't want him to mysteriously go blind during the match with Gryffindor."

"Right, because announcing it in the middle of the common room makes future blackmail so very effective." The Slytherin Quidditch captain said dryly, his large teeth gleaming as he spoke. Valeria looked down at her latest test subject and snorted; the resemblance was uncanny. "If you want me to help Campbell, you have to make it worth my time." He looked at her critically for a moment. "I doubt even you could help me with NEWTs while still in your third year, and with your muggle ancestry you'd find the other option distasteful. If you could convince your blonder friend however..." He raised his eyebrows suggestively.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you get three Ts and three Ds last year?" She responded to his crudeness with a smirk. "Any third year could help you avoid repeating your last year once more, I think." She shrugged, then jabbed at the test subject while muttering under her breath - no effect. Why wasn't it working? "If you don't though, I could help you win the Slytherin-Gryffindor match." Harry taking Ron's side after their argument in the library had considerably cooled all three girls' opinions towards their Gryffindor friends and while Daphne and Tracey simply chose to give them the silent treatment, Valeria was more into active solutions.

"As if you know anything about Quidditch." The burly Captain said. "As for last year's NEWTs, I deliberately failed them."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" The young witch said, aghast. "Why would you do something like that?"

"It's only an extra year's worth of tuition, Campbell." Flint explained with a superior attitude. "The Ministry and most employers only care about your marks. Ultimately it's a few thousand Galleons spent to guarantee enough Outstandings to make the short list into the Auror program. The social stigma of losing a year..." he rolled his eyes "...only idiots care about that. Now, what was that about Quidditch?"

"Featherlight Charm. Making yourselves lighter would improve both your acceleration and your control dramatically during the match." She said with a frown. Flint's plan was actually clever. He was doing exactly as she did, getting more time to study. Was money spent and delaying one's carreer for a year more or less dangerous than risking a temporal paradox? "And before you complain, yes, I've read the rules of Quidditch. Neither wands nor potions can be used on or against any players, any players' broomsticks, the referee, any of the four balls, or the spectators, by either the teams, the officials, or the crowd. But as I do not intend to be part of any of those groups, I can cast as much magic on you as I want. I can certainly cast the Charms of you before the match starts and make them last for the duration. As I'll not be in the pitch at all, nobody can complain about anything illegal." Ignoring Flint's gobsmacked expression, she jabbed her wand at the rat on her desk and cast the spell. A feebly twitching tail was the only result, and a few seconds later another conjured snake landed on her.

"Malfoy, stop annoying her." Flint said without much feeling.

"Oh come on Captain." The blond boy said with a stupid grin. "Just one parting shot." And without waiting for a response, he summoned one more snake and threw it with yet another Banishing Charm. This time his aim was true, and the snake fell into her shirt. Pansy's and Lillian's giggles turned into peals of laughter as Valeria's anger boiled over. A split second from cursing them all to oblivion and damn the consequences, what she'd been doing wrong registered. Turning back to the rat, she jabbed at it with her wand as if stabbing it with a dagger.

 _"Vivifico Rattum!"_

She whispered harshly, infusing the spell with her anger. Instead of random twitching, the enchantments she'd spent hours working into the rodent fell into a steady rhythm, limbs working, tail swinging, head staring left and right at her mental command.

"You finally managed a full animation charm, huh?" Flint said with amusement. "What's that, fifth, maybe sixth year magic? I don't think you're ready for NEWTs quite yet."

Valeria ignored him and his ignorance. It was an easy mistake to make, what with all the transfigured or conjured animals used as targets in pre-NEWT classes, but a future Auror should know better. Her test subject was a real rat, brought in with a Summoning Charm. Working carefully now, she instructed it to jump off the table, run to the third-year girl's dormitories, return to her, then jump into her purse. Obeying as if she'd bound it with a powerful compulsion or the Imperius Curse, it completed the test perfectly. Not bad for a rat that had been dead for several hours now. Full of excitement, the young witch confirmed the calculations responsible for her latest attempt's success and left the Slytherin common room in search of more rats.

She had no idea what she'd do with the newly made rat Inferius but she was sure she could come up with something.


	58. New Lessons

**Mari Clair Roemajji Celts: The rules of Quidditch are supposed to prevent such use of magic, but Valeria found the one loophole they still have. It's not a loophole that can be fixed either, as if magic from those not on the pitch could disqualify players, someone could simply cast one of the harmless but unbreakable charms on a player and disqualify him for life without committing a crime. The Featherlight Charm is not Valeria's favorite spell. It is simply a utility spell that has many uses and thus appears in many scenes. She's actually been using Levitation, Shielding, and Fire-Making more often, two of which she can do wandlessly.**

 **The Viking Stranger: So many possibilities, yes. So little time, no. Time Turner, remember?**

 **Urazz: Valeria isn't evil most times, but she can be dark. She doesn't believe they're the same and only time will tell if she's right.**

 **Slytherin's Strumpet: Valeria works best with big, slow magic. She's got a lot of power and focus, but little control.**

 **ro781727/dragonblade3200: Necromancy isn't taught in Hogwarts. None of the Dark Arts are - only defense against them. This is not Flint's fault but Dumbledore's. How can you identify something if you've never seen it before? It helps that Valeria hid her efforts in plain sight.**

 **Guest/a1993: Harry was not shown to take Ron's side in this. In fact, he was shown trying to defuse the situation. What Valeria thinks happened after the fact is her own judgement being a bit biased. Of course Harry is closer to Ron; they're in the same House and spend far more time together. That doesn't mean he does not value both friendships. Of course, that doesn't stop Ron from being deliberately annoying either. Justified or not, he knew what he did was not nice. He'd been on the receiving end before, after all.**

 **Serpentine13: Making Inferi isn't harder than casting a Patronus magic-wise.** **Given that Dennis Creevey and Nigel Wolpelt produced Patronii as members of the DA, it isn't that impressive - assuming you can find how to do it. And yes, 'Vivifico' means 'I reanimate' or 'I give life'.  
**

 **iamaduvall: thanks**

 **Disclaimer: Did Hermione keep the fact that Lupin was a werewolf to herself instead of sharing it with her best friends? If yes, Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling. I am only using this awesome world she created to write for fun.**

 **...**

"Miss Campbell this is an infirmary, not the Quidditch field!" Madam Pomfrey said indignantly. "I've already had to evict the entire Gryffindor team. What makes you think I'll allow you to disrupt my patients' much needed peace and quiet?" Much like Valeria herself, Hogwarts' mediwitch had little patience for fools. The hospital wing was her domain and as long as her charges were under her care, she would defend her authority over them even from the Headmaster - for their own good of course. Unfortunately for her, the young Slytherin witch would not accept being kept away from her friends and was willing to do almost anything to achieve her ends.

A few minutes after the matron's curt dismissal, Valeria was still hovering at the entrance to the hospital wing when she heard an indignant yelp from within, followed by a crash only a few seconds later as something heavy fell to the floor. Drawing her wand, she stepped resolutely inside, ready for anything.

"Val!" Harry exclaimed from one of the beds he'd been resting on. The boy's skin was pale, his hands were sweaty and not very steady, his eyes were disoriented, and he had a pretty impressive bruise on one side of his head. He had still drawn his wand and was scanning the room for hidden dangers however. "What are you doing here?"

"I heard you fell off your broom and came to see you." She said, keeping her guard up and her wand at the ready. "Only, Madam Pomfrey didn't allow me inside. I was waiting at the door, thinking how to come in despite her overbearing overprotectiveness, when I heard someone yelp. After recent events in Hogsmeade and elsewhere, I was not about to stay uninvolved."

"Umm... thanks." Harry said awkwardly, recent strains on their friendship still in his mind. "I think it was Madam Pomfrey," he continued a bit uncertainly. "The yelp came from her office and sounded like her anyway."

"I'll go and check." She said, turning towards the small door no student was allowed through under normal circumstances. "And for Merlin's sake, Harry, raise a bloody shield! It can save you from sudden attacks."

The hospital matron's office was nothing of the sort. There was a small desk on one corner, a single uncomfortable chair behind it, but most of the space was taken up by cabinets full of medical potions, herbal remedies, rare ingredients, and supplies used in Healing, from perpetually disinfected sheets to a variable temperature blanket. One entire wall was taken up by fairly extensive brewing equipment, indicating Madam Pomfrey did not entirely rely on Snape's efforts for her potions - a wise decision, in Valeria's opinion. There was only one thing out of place that would have immediately drawn any visitor's attention but as soon as Valeria tried to check it out, she was hurled back by an invisible force.

"Val!" Harry tried to jump to his feet and come to her assistance but he was far from recovered. His legs failed to support him and he tumbled to the floor, bruising his wrist and losing his wand in the process. Despite the obvious pain he was in though, his first concern was still his friend. "Are you OK?" He called out worriedly.

"Ow!" Came the Slytherin witch's eloquent reply. Being hurled back twenty feet as if slapped aside by a giant was not a pleasant experience. Landing on her backside and losing her own wand just as Harry had added insult to injury. "I think Madam Pomfrey put some sort of defensive enchantment around her office to prevent students from messing with her medical supplies."

"Why were you trying to get in then?" Harry asked.

"Because I saw Madam Pomfrey unconscious in there and I was trying to help?" She groaned, called her wand back to her hand, and cast a Featherlight spell on herself. Much easier to pretend she wouldn't have to use a bruise salve come morning if her weight became a fraction of what it normally was. "Here." She said, levitating Harry's wand back to him, then returning him to his bed as well. "And don't cast anything other than a shield. You're still recovering and I haven't seen any trace of Madam Pomfrey's attacker. Better safe than sorry."

"What are we going to do?" Harry asked, looking at the office door and obviously wondering whether she'd triggered all the traps that had been put there.

"Not a chance, mister." She stated. "Seriously, is the safety of others the only thing you Gryffindors ever think of? No wonder you get offed so often and we Slytherins have to step in and save the day." She shook her head while he pouted. He was lucky her ordered Pensieve hadn't arrived yet - if it had, half the school would be seeing that expression come evening.

"Shouldn't you go find a Professor or something?"

"And leave you here unattended? Points for the effort, Potter." She said dryly. Retrieving parchment and quill from her purse, she summarized the situation in a few words, lifted her wand, and focused as strongly as she could on a certain image in her mind.

 _"Accio Dumbledore's Hat!"_

A few seconds passed, during which Harry stared incredulously at her, and then the hat in question came in through the door. She stuck the message into it with the basic Sticking Charm, fixed the Headmaster's image firmly in her thoughts and cast again.

 _"Depulso Dumbledore's Hat!"_

The hat flew off again, returning to its original position. "You know," she said conversationally while Harry still gaped "there must be a better way for witches and wizards to send messages to each other. This one won't work if the target is more than a few miles away, and the enchanted mirror Neville got from his grandma is one of a pair, limiting that method between two preset individuals."

"You summoned the Headmaster's hat!" Harry exclaimed.

"I don't think he'll mind, Harry." She said testily. "In this at least we agree, he and I; you're rather important." She sighed. "I think we got a minute or two before he arrives. Why don't you tell me exactly how you got hurt. I need to know who to dismember for this, you know."

 **...**

The rest of the month passed by in a blur. Even the success of the Disillusioned rat Inferius as a potion delivery system could not improve Valeria's mood. There was nothing quite like knowing your school was surrounded by soul-sucking demons against which you had no defense to ruin any chance for happiness... or was that the Dementors' influence talking?

Charms class was alternating between emotion manipulation and energy control. They'd finished with the basic Cheering Charm and were trying their hand at the Freezing Charm. Tracey, who'd managed the former more easily than most of the class, was having problems. Daphne on the other hand seemed to be making great strides with the latter - to be expected, since she'd been using it for two years already. The two of them could often be seen bickering about which subset of Charms was the most useful, but it didn't seem to be harming their friendship.

Transfiguration had finally progressed into their first Inanimate to Animate shifts, such as changing teapots to tortoises and slippers into rabbits. Both Valeria and Daphne had practiced enough to find the material easy so they usually cast the required spell at the beginning of their lesson then used the rest of the time to practice Conjuration. Unfortunately, conjuring anything denser or more complex than water was still beyond them; even the simple clay tile they'd tried before refused to stabilize for more than half a minute. Professor McGonagal had noticed of course, but didn't do anything beyond look on with interest. Padma Patil took advantage of their lack of attention to answer more theoretical questions and gain points but Valeria no longer saw their little contest as exciting. The other girl's taunts and smug looks felt petty and hollow with the threat of both Death Eaters and Dementors hanging over everyone's heads.

Care of Magical Creatures was interesting, if not Valeria's best subject. She was one of the last to ride her Hippogriff, and had even fallen off from a height of over a hundred feet during an unexpected barrel roll, sending most of the class screaming. Luckily she had the presence of mind to cast the Featherlight Charm on herself, turning a probably fatal fall into a manageable landing as her weight, and by extension the force of her fall, was reduced drastically. Hagrid had given her twenty points for quick thinking, and both Draco and Pansy had expressed their disappointment at her survival by trying to hex her while Hagrid wasn't looking. An opportunity for payback arrived when they started on Fire-crabs in the next lesson. Following Professor Kettleburn's letters and hers and Tracey's suggestions, Hagrid explained how Fire-crab shells could become amazing cauldrons due to their resistance to corossives and magic, and how many variants of Fire-crabs naturally produced precious stones attached to their exoskeletons. They were a protected species and their breeding was highly regulated, ostensibly due to wizards hunting them as cauldron materials - but Valeria suspected that was just an excuse. The true reason was almost certainly said production of precious stones; Fire-crab breeding could easily depreciate the value of diamonds, rubies, and emeralds in wizarding and goblin vaults if left unchecked. Near the end of that introductory lesson, Tracey showed a variant Compulsion Charm that worked very well on animals. Fifteen minutes of practice later, Hagrid's entire group of Fire-crabs had turned away from Draco's and Pansy's location then employed their defense mechanism, discharging jets of fire from their... backsides. The two gits had only been slightly singed thanks to their Shield Charms taking the worst of it, but they've been pretty thoroughly befouled. Pansy had cried all the way to the castle and rumor was both of them had spent at least six hours in the baths.

Astronomy progressed nicely. They were now studying stars beyond those in the major constellations and Valeria was once again amazed at the subtle but powerful magic in the school's telescopes. Not only were they looking at stars that should not have been visible with telescopes so small, but not a single lesson in the last three years had been cancelled due to the weather. She hurried to finish her own chart as soon as possible so she could question Professor Sinistra on what kinds of spells wizards used to observe, collect, and analyze starlight from such distances and conditions.

Herbology might not be any higher than Care of Magical Creatures in Valeria's list of awesome subjects, but the lessons they were having at the moment were very interesting. They were revisiting Puffapods, a magical plant they'd worked with in passing over their first year. Being more advanced now, they could study its beans and their amazing properties more closely. Few Slytherins seemed interested in a bean that could sprout into a full plant in moments but after partnering with Susan Bones and Hannah Abbot, the only other girls who shared her enthusiasm, the three of them asked Professor Sprout how Puffapods interacted with Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration. Beans and plant matter were edible after all, and a bean that could become a plant in moments only to make more beans ran counter to the magical impossibility of food production through magic. Professor Sprout had given ten points to Slytherin and twenty to Hufflepuff for pointing that out, then explained that Gamp's Law largely applied only to Transfiguration. Other forms of magic could produce food, such as Charms that could replicate it, and Herbology was the most effective magic when it came to food production. It might not involve flashy spells coming out of a wand, but it could be just as powerful and was a form of magic in its own right.

Divination was a bust. Valeria had not a single hint of innate skill in that branch of magic in any of the exercises she tried, but in this she was no different than the majority of the class. Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown were the only ones with a genuine "Inner Eye" as Professor Trelawney called it, but their instructor had neitheir informed the class of that, nor mentioned that Divination could simply not be learned without said skill. Most of the students simply made things up and provided them as predictions in the homework she gave them and Ron and Harry got the best marks for their creativity. Not wanting to present herself as something she wasn't to no clear gain, Valeria didn't bother using her Time-Turner to arrange predictions of her own. She pretended to follow Trelawney's instructions while she was actually trying her hand at basic Arithmantic prognostication. Their attempts at tasseomancy provided a good random 'seed' of measurable values in each teacup where numerology and other arithmantic disciplines could be applied. It took longer - especially without quill and parchment to write the calculations down - but she could usually make one or two minor predictions per lesson.

Ancient Runes were quickly becoming her favorite subject. They'd long since learned the basic runic characters of course, it was no harder to memorize than any other array of two dozen symbols. They were working on simple text translations, which came to her very easily, but her real interest was in how Runes combined the firm rules and high complexity of a written language with the powerful intent and intuitive understanding required to cast magic. Simply put, this type of magic seemed custom-made to fit her personality and talents like a glove. She'd taken to writing out and testing runic instriptions in her spare time, especially during the History of Magic classes. Binns would not even notice the magical effects occasionally radiating out of the tablets she brought in class, but she had to keep them away from Professor Babbling's disapproving gaze. The aging Runemistress did not tolerate students toying with magics they did not understand and might even suspend her from class if she was seen. On the other hand, she had already invented a medium metaphysically important enough to power her runic scripts, while both easy to handle and innocuous-looking by mixing beeswax with human blood. The resulting solid tablets retained much of the blood's potency, could be easily carved, allowed mistakes to be easily fixed, did not make a mess, and had a fairly long shelf life.

Defense against the Dark Arts involved lots of dark creatures and how to fight them, but no Boggarts yet. Professor Lupin had yet to locate another one in the castle, but despite all the derisive commentary about his appearance and clothing from Draco Malfoy and his posse, he was still searching for one. He was a superior instructor to either Lockhart or Riddle-possessed Quirrel because he understood students and could present information in the best, most easily understood way. One day near the end of the month however, Professor Snape had to substitute because Professor Lupin was missing. According to Harry's interrogation of her Head of House during Gryffindor's turn with him that day, Lupin was sick enough to have to stay in the infirmary. Valeria wasn't certain his loss of points and detention had been worth that vague answer until she saw what Professor Snape had to teach them about; werewolves. Such an abrupt departure from the curriculum immediately drew Valeria's attention, especially given the pretty enormous coincidence. She was the best in her year (and probably the following two years) in Astronomy and as such, she had not missed that Monday the 29th was a full moon. Even Harry and Ron had noticed and shared their observations that Professor Snape seemed to hate Professor Lupin for some reason, and the Potions Master's demand of a hefty essay on what was essentially werewolf-hunting... surely not! If her suspicions were true, Dumbledore was certainly losing something in his old age and it wasn't his ability to limit his restroom visits to under six per day.

This needed confirmation posthaste, so Valeria took out her trusty rat Inferius. She'd made a little collar for the now emaciated and hairless little horror, from which a tiny cage hung. In it could be placed rolls of parchment and her spare Dictaquill, both shrunk to miniscule size. Then her self-propelling listening device could be lavishly loaded with secrecy charms and Disillusioned, ready to sneak into and spy on the most secure areas of the castle. If one of their Professors turned out to be a class-XXXXX beast three days per month, her boredom and depression at being locked up inside the castle would be well and truly over.


	59. Demands Made

**Urazz: good guesses - mostly. :)**

 **SinghSong: The Summoning Charm doesn't work on humans (much like the Levitation Charm), unless you focus it on objects they carry. As an Animagus with no objects on his person in that form, Pettigrew can't be summoned. Same reason why Sirius didn't abduct a random first-year student from Hogsmeade, then used their wand to summon Pettigrew.**

 **Slytherin's Strumpet: I don't think Dumbledore would mind the use his hat was put in.**

 **ro781727: minions are definitely handy. The Dark Wanker used snakes at a distance for that same reason.**

 **Meneldur: Mentioning every class would take too long - due to frequent updates, I often leave things for the next chapter. Some readers have fun predicting what will be mentioned in the next chapter that way. Case in point, Daphne and Tracey's reactions and the Flitwick encounter were coming up in this one and there were reasons they were delayed. Arithmancy is mentioned however - Valeria is doing exercises in it during Divination. As for potions, she was doing sixth-year brews back in her second year. Unless she's surprised by something in class (which will be mentioned), we can safely assume she knows the 3rd year stuff. But generally yes, Val is not as close to the others this year - for the same reason Hermione did the same in canon.**

 **Did the Weasley Twins or Harry never confront Hermione for appearing multiple times in the Maurauder's Map during her third year? If yes, Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling. I'm merely an amateur playing in her playground.**

 **...**

When Valeria entered the Charms classroom only to see the diminutive Professor fiddling with a pair of binoculars again, her mounting excitement at their private lesson crashed and burned. When they had started their non-detentions together, the part-goblin Charms Master had explained that he needed to observe her spellcasting before he could be certain how to best help her and had procceeded to give her a list of spells she was to cast from during their first few meetings. A hundred castings of eighty spells, evenly spread between Transfiguration, Charms, Defense, and Curses, from the curriculum of the first four years made for an exciting hour in their first meeting, a fun forty-five minutes in their second, and a fairly boring half-hour in their third. During it all, Professor Flitwick had neither talked to her nor gave her other instructions, and had ended their lesson as soon as she was done. In fact, he'd hardly paid any attention to her at all, spending every minute of their time together with those binoculars. Maybe they were some new magical invention he was interested in? If so however, why didn't he play with them in his own time rather than wasting her own?

Something of her anger and disappointment must have showed in her expression because the Charms Master lowered his binoculars and smiled at her wryly. She was ready to defend her opinion of their wasted time together since she was sure he'd bring it up then, but the question that followed was not the one she expected.

"You're not very good with people, are you Miss Campbell?" Professor Flitwick asked cheerfully.

"I... what?"

"Not to worry, not to worry, I was the same at your age." He cackled. "A model student, yes, but one with a chip on his shoulder the size of the Great Tower - rather amazing that my little frame managed to bear it for as long as it did, don't you think?" Valeria's confusion increased; she'd come to those lessons expecting to be taught magic, not secrets of her Professor's early years. "I was part-goblin, you see. However good I was in magic, I couldn't quite escape prejudice - and it was entirely my fault."

"What?" She demanded, surprised. "How was your peers' idiotic bigotry your fault?"

"Because discrimination does not happen because one is different, Miss Cambell." The tiny wizard said solemnly. "It happens because one is socially rejected. Being different is only half of the equation - the other half is what one does about it. Unless discrimination is too prevalent for any action to bridge, one can usually overcome it by being outgoing, likable, accepting, and gracious. Or, if one's goals are slightly different, by being successful, desirable, convincing, and manipulative. In either case, with enough skill in social interactions, one is eventually accepted as member of society and while discrimination is still present, it is no longer as prevalent or important."

"That is not what I've experienced." Valeria countered, remembering her last two years in Hogwarts.

"Of course it isn't!" Flitwick exlaimed. "You've done pretty much everything you could to stand out and go against what is seen as acceptable behavior by your peers. There is not a hint of compromise in you, no desire to be accepted in the first place. I dare say you'd have become the outsider you are now even without your peers' unfortunate views on your origins."

"I see no reason to emulate a herd of brainless idiots endlessly regurgitating a core of ideals and beliefs with no basis of reality." She snapped back. Valeria was getting angry now, the 'lesson' not going at all in the direction she had expected. "What does this have to do with my magic, anyway?"

"Of course you don't." The Charms Master cheerfully agreed. "And that's a problem. Anyone being in a situation they see as stupid, or boring, or otherwise pointless, but with no means to change it will react negatively. Emotion being one of the five cornerstones of magic, your reactions to a situation can and do affect your magic." He lifted the binoculars he'd been fiddling with during their past three lessons. "That you've been casting faster and more strongly in many of the spells on that list the more annoyed you were at my seemingly not paying attention is proof enough of that."

"Oh." Valeria had been left speechless at how easily the aging Professor had disguised the main point of their lessons from her. Not only had he been paying attention when she thought otherwise, but there was a point to begin with when she'd thought there hadn't been... and not noticing was entirely her fault - she'd not even looked! "Why use such a prop, though?" She asked more to change the subject than anything else, pointing at the binoculars in his hands.

"Those aren't binoculars, Miss Campbell." The diminutive Professor smirked at her dubious expression. "Or, I should say, they are not merely binoculars. As you must be aware from both your Astronomy lessons and the Defense course you had with Professor Lockhart last year, wizardkind has had means to record and recall events for much longer than muggles have. This little device here is a recent invention that combines a few of those methods for convenience." He raised the non-binoculars for her to see, pointing at the many dials and buttons. "Basic image-capturing and image manipulation charms used in Astronomy coupled with a modified memory storage and illusion projection allow for a functionality similar to but superior than a muggle camera - with the added benefits that the device works in the presence of heavy magic, and needs no power supply."

"You... recorded our sessions?" Valeria had not heard of wizarding video cameras before. Then again, wizards had both moving pictures and the ability to store, view, and project memories, or even entire personalities. Making a camera would have been easy, if one only thought to do it.

"Indeed. The ability to study a promising student's spellcasting at high-zoom and slow-motion is invaluable for any teacher - or even the student herself, if she wishes to review her own efforts in detail." He winked at her, then went on. "There's a wealth of information we gathered from our sessions so far and my study of it has revealed a few important facts. May I see your wand, Miss Campbell?"

Valeria was still reeling at the possibilities such a tool allowed for in the study of magic, so she handed over her focus without question. Her Professor studied it carefully for a few minutes, gave it a few flicks with no apparent result, then returned it to her.

"What I know of Wand Lore, Miss Campbell, is an amateur's gleanings over a long carreer as a duellist, where researching opponents' wands gives you insight on the opponents themselves. What I will tell you should be taken with a grain of salt as it might go against the wisdom of more learned wand-makers. Make of it what you will." She nodded. Wand Lore was the one branch of magical lore she'd found nothing about in Hogwarts' library, or any other collection of magical books she'd ever visited. It was probably an art handed down from master to student, kept secret from the majority of wizards.

"Cherry is a very rare wand wood, making for wands of truly lethal power. As a rule, dragon heartstrings produce wands with the most power, capable of the most impressive magic and tend to learn quicker than other types. They are easier to turn to the Dark Arts, bond strongly with their current master, and are prone to accidents. That combination alone would make for an extremely hazardous focus, before even other factors come into play." The Charms Master sighed. "Wand length often -but not always- correlates with focus and dedication on a given path or goal, high flexibility means ability to adapt to new situations, and thickness makes for a slow but powerful implement used with deliberation."

"So..." Valeria carefully considered this new information critically. Why had Ollivander not shared it with her? Wizards and their desire to keep secrets just for their own amusement annoyed her at times. "It is my wand that is the problem then?"

"Of course not, young lady." Flitwick admonished, but she could see hints of his usual smile on his face. "As I'm sure you have been told, the wand chooses the wizard. Somehow wandmakers can predict what wands they need to make to fit future witches and wizards, often decades before said witches and wizards are even born. Ollivander sold you the wand that would best fit your personality, magical talent, and goals. The problems you are having are because the exact combination of those three things that makes you, well, you is... volatile on its own, no wand needed."

"So what am I going to do then?" She asked, keeping the anger from her voice. The part-goblin Professor had only been helpful to her so far, even at times he was not willing to see it.

"That depends." He said. The matter was serious - Valeria saw no reason he should be smiling now. "Do you see yourself settling for other, perhaps less impressive and confrontational goals than those you have now? Or perhaps never developing one of your talents due to the challenges that course might bring you?"

"Hell no!" The Slytherin witch said without a moment's hesitation.

"Excellent!" The diminutive wizard said, and rubbed his hands in anticipation. "Since you're not willing to change those two things - and you'd lose a great deal of my respect if you were - the only thing left to do is develop your self-control and strength of mind until they're up to the challenge."

"How are we going to do that?" Valeria asked, anticipation building at the possibility of advanced lessons.

"Why, through practice of course!" Professor Flitwick said cheerfully. "Strength of mind comes through experience and surviving adversity, so you shouldn't have a problem with it. Self-control on the other hand is something you sorely lack right now, so we'll work on it."

"Professor?" She didn't like the Charms Master's tone when he said that.

"For the next month or so you will not confront any of your peers, for any reason. You can bring any matters to the faculty's attention and you can defend yourself against permanent harm of course, but otherwise no fighting."

"What?!" She exclaimed incredulously. "Why?"

"Because patience my dear is a virtue." He grinned up at her. "It is also a sign of self-control, as is humility. This exercise will teach you both, I think."

"Fine!" She said, not believing a word. "Anything else?"

"Practicing with advanced magic would also be beneficial." He frowned. "I hear your friend Mister Potter is trying to arrange some Patronus lessons with Professor Lupin. Why don't you join him? You, too, have had trouble with Dementors, have you not?"

"Yes..." The Slytherin witch said, her thoughts running a mile a minute through her latest plan. There was only one day -or rather night- left to test a hypothesis and she only saw one way to do it. "Professor, may I borrow the... binoculars?"

"They're called Omnioculars, Miss Campbell." He said, handing them over. "An appropriate name, and I don't see why not. Studying our previous sessions yourself could give you some new insights into your problems."

"Thank you, Professor." She said with feeling, a new plan falling into place in her mind. "Thank you very much."

 **...**

"Muggle Studies is proving less useful than I thought." Daphe mused in their evening study session. "Seriously, finding a Muggle device that works in Hogwarts, researching its uses, and writing a paper on it? How are pureblood students supposed to finish such a Christmas assignment?"

"Maybe it's your professor's fault." Tracey said darkly. "Burbage strikes me as a bleeding heart muggle apologist, but she isn't muggleborn; she knows how the game is played. Giving you an assignment that favors muggleborn students could be her way of sticking it to any purebloods without officially being at fault." The brunette returned to her own paper and sighed. "Not that Care of Magical Creatures is any better when it comes to assignments. Hagrid has us researching the compatibility of Fire-crabs with other magical creatures, to be listed in order of 'interesting results'. I didn't expect a paper on experimental breeding as homework on my first year in the class, you know?"

"Ugh, aren't Fire-crabs only compatible with magical bugs or partial bugs?" Daphne shuddered. "Better you than me, girlfriend. Even thinking about it feels like a compulsion to lose myself in the bathroom for a couple of hours, consuming a gallon or two of Sleekeasy's products in the process. At least we only have one or the other."

"Poor Val." Tracey agreed solemnly. "She has both classes, along with Trelawney's bullshitting sessions." She stared at where the shorter blonde was playing with a weird emaciated little monster that looked like a hairless rat, and a pair of strange binoculars Tracey had only seen some serious Quidditch fans gushing over during the summer. "Hey Val! What do you think?" She asked.

"Harry's the better option." Their friend answered without looking up from her own work. "Though Ron's position as a sixth child would allow either of you to keep your family name, I don't think I could stomach his immaturity - no offense, Daphne. A good idea on paper might not turn out as well once the deed is done."

Tracey and Daphne exchanged worried glances. That Valeria, normally the most perceptive of the three girls, still thought they were continuing yesterday's discussion was one thing. That she'd taken some light banter and a few poor jokes seriously was another entirely - and far more serious. What was going on with their friend?

 **...**

"I demand you release me this instant!" The young woman said at the top of her voice, struggling against the conjured ropes.

"No, can't do." Sirius answered in a voice hoarse from disuse. "I was always pants at healing spells, so your spine is still cracked after our trip down those stairs. You try and stand up before it recovers, you might damage it further. You try and Apparate in your condition, you'll be left paralyzed for life."

"Then take me to St. Mungo's!" She gave him her second most frequent demand once more. "I refuse to be treated like an invalid!"

"I'm not treating you like an invalid, Jones." Sirius really hoped she started acting like one any time now.

"Oh yeah? Why am I tied up on this bed then?" She said in a dnagerous tone.

"Because you're acting like an idiot." Sirius chuckled at her murderous expression. "Believe me, I'm familiar with that kind of act."

"Really?" She growled, scowling. "It has nothing to do with you being an escaped murderer and how I would turn you in, then?"

"I am not a murderer!" He roared. "However much I wished I was over the past couple of weeks - then I wouldn't be forced to suffer your incessant nagging!"

"That's right, blame it on the victim." She retorted acidly. "What are you planning to do to me then? Keep me here until I'm well enough to walk, then Imperius me and have me do your bidding?"

"I wish." Sirius muttered. If he was willing to do that he could have saved both his ears and have some fun in the process but noooo, he had to be a man of principles, however loose. "Do you even realize how you've messed up my plans?"

"Hey buddy you knocked me down the stairs, not the other way around." She huffed indignantly. "And it was your bloody idea to abduct me while I was unconscious. If you'd left me behind, Professor Dumbledore or Madam Pomfrey would have had me healed long before now." Her expression suddenly perked up. "But hey, no rush. While you got to watch over me, you can't carry out your plans of murder and mayhem so essentially I'm keeping everyone safe even while invalid." The insufferable Jones girl whistled. "Damn, I'm good."

 _"Stupefy!"_

The red bolt left her unconscious but with a smile on her face. Not wanting to spend any longer in her company than necessary, Sirius planned another intrusion into the castle to nick a bottle of Skele-gro from Madam Pomfrey's stash. If he was lucky he'd have Jones out of his hair by this time next week, and he could maybe pick up the rat on his way back, too.

 **...**

"Come in!" Professor Lupin called out from inside his office in a worn out, tired voice. Valeria pushed the door open swiftly and got inside with a spring on her steps. Last night's mission had given her all the confirmation she could have ever asked for. Now, for the fun part.

"Good morning, Professor!" she greeted the obviously tired and sick-looking wizard. He was pale and clammy, with black bags under his too-red eyes and every movement seemed to take him considerable effort.

"Good morning, Miss Campbell." He returned her greeting politely. "What brings you to my office so early in the day?"

"I heard from Harry about your potential Patronus lessons..." She said, seeing no reason to beat around the bush. "...and I was wondering whether I could join you?"

"I see." The older wizard said seriously. "The Patronus charm is an exceedingly advanced piece of magic, Miss Campbell. Not every wizard can manage it." He raised his hand to forestall any arguments. "I know you're at least as advanced for your age as Harry, but that isn't the only issue. I believe I've found a way to teach Harry -and you- the spell, but it will have to wait until after the holidays - as I said to Harry too."

"Why, Professor?" She asked, putting as much curiosity as she could manage into her voice. "I mean, the holidays would be the perfect time to teach us as we don't have any lessons for two weeks."

"That may be true, but as a new Professor I am still terribly busy." Remus Lupin said firmly. Only someone both highly perceptive and looking out for it would have detected the dishonesty in his voice - he was a very good liar. With a secret such as his, he'd have to be.

"That's odd." Valeria commented. "I distinctly remember both previous Defense Professors being free during the holidays. Professor Lockhart even used the opportunity to answer to a large number of fanmail." Had Lupin not been immediately dishonest, had he simply told her it was none of her business - as he could have, what with him being a Professor and her a third-year student - she would have left it there. Given the horrible intentions of past Defense Professors however, she couldn't allow another potentially dangerous lunatic free rein of the castle. She had to know.

"Look." Lupin pinched his nose, pausing for a moment to think. "I understand your desire to learn how to defend yourself against something as horrible as Dementors but I have my own plans for the holidays." Again that hint of deception. Why was he lying? If he had nothing to hide other than his condition, he could have simply sent her off with a detention for talking back to a teacher for Merlin's sake.

"Does it have anything to do with the potion Professor Snape is making for you?" She asked curiously. "A need to, I don't know, adjust to it?" She hadn't been able to find much about it in the library and frankly, she was curious. Was Lupin's strange behavior a side effect of its influence?

"Harry told you about it, I suppose?" No, he hadn't. Her improved rat spy had seen Professor Snape delivering it to Lupin's office yesterday, a few hours before the main festivities had begun. "As I told Harry, I am feeling a little down lately. That potion is the only one that helps at all."

"Right." Enough of this. Professor Flitwick had asked her not to be confrontational, but Lupin wasn't her peer. And if he was a danger for the school -beyond his condition, that was- she would do something about it. "Feeling 'a little down' hardly describes a powerful and incurable curse, Professor."

"What did you say?" He demanded suddenly, eyes going wide.

"Let's drop the charade, shall we? You're a werewolf." The older wizard paled, but didn't reach for his wand. Good for him; not only was Valeria's wand already in her left hand, but she was ready to throw cursed fire with her right at the slightest hint of aggression. "But that is largely irrelevant as long as it's controlled. Why are you here in the school?"

"You... you don't mind that I'm a werewolf?" He said, recovering his composure with remarkable aclarity.

"Why would I? Professor Snape is covering your absences in the days of the full moon when you're not feeling well so we aren't missing any lessons, his potion allows you to remain in control during those three nights of the month, and no students have been found mangled or gone missing." She frowned at him. "What I really want explained is your presence here. What the hell was Dumbledore thinking?"

"Why are you worried about that if you don't care I'm a werewolf?" He asked, curiously.

"Gee, let'see." She started counting on her fingers theatrically. "First year, Professor Quirrel happened to be possessed by Voldemort. Not only that, but he tried to steal the Philosopher's Stone -we stopped him, by the way- and I have it on good authority that Headmaster Dumbledore arranged the confrontation between him and Harry."

"He WHAT?"

"Second year," she talked over Lupin's protests "We get a fraud mindraper for a Professor who only teaches us mind magic, and the only reason he doesn't take a few of the older girls into his bed and then erase their memories is someone warning him off." The werewolf Professor now stood still as a statue, his chin halfway to the floor. Apparently, Dumbledore did not see fit to inform him of certain facts.

"Third year, we get you." She snorted. "You being a werewolf isnt an issue - being both deceitful and willing to work in a cursed position is. Only those with ulterior motives or total lack of common sense would brave the dark enchantment on the Defense post after thirty-six victims."

"I have my reasons." Remus Lupin stared at her for a few moments, then deflated. "But I see that isn't enough. Is this blackmail then?"

"Security." She frowned thoughtfully then looked up at him. "Professor, you don't need to be in Hogwarts to teach. Get a two-way mirror, enlarge one end to the size of a portrait, and teach your classes remotely. If you're not in the castle the curse can't hurt you. More importantly, it can't push you into harming us by accident or design."

"Unfortunately, I need to be here Miss Campbell." Professor Lupin said. "For security reasons, as you said. The Death Eaters out there would very much like to get their hands on Harry. And one of their number has knowledge of the castle few others do. I am one of those others. Headmaster Dumbledore hired me specifically to protect Harry from potential threats through that knowledge - it's one of the reasons I believe you're mistaken in your assumptions about him. Does this satisfy you?"

Great, more plots within plots. Lupin probably believed what he'd just told her, too. Unfortunately, Valeria didn't. Equally as unfortunately, she couldn't do anything about it at the moment. Finding a way for a werewolf to not go on an accidental rampage - yet another thing on her plate.

Good thing she had nothing but time.

 **...**

"This thing is faulty again."

"No it isn't."

"Yes it is - look, Campbell appears twice again."

"It's never been wrong before."

"Hmm, maybe Cambpell is doing it?"

"How? She doesn't even know about it."

"She's a snake. They're devious."

"True enough. You know we should-"

"-investigate? Excellent suggestion. How should we-"

"-go about it? Ambush, then demand answers."

"Hmm... good enough. Should I bring-"

"-the Blinding Busters? Aren't they-"

"-untested? Field tests are better than self-tests."

"True, and hurt less. Let's be off."

The two boys folded up the large piece of parchment they'd been examining, loaded up on several bags of supplies, and walked at a brisk pace through the secret passage towards Hogwarts. Lockdown or no lockdown, nobody kept the Weasley Twins from their joke supplies.


	60. Questions

**Da Zhang: Oh come on. You don't want to see some midgets with Ron's jealousy and expression issues coupled with Daphne's usual iciness and superior attitude? :)**

 **Urazz: excellent guesses, as always.**

 **ro781727: No, it was Valeria who did it. Disillusioned rat Inferius with sleeping agent applied to its teeth - Val mentions it in passing. As for Sirius and Jones, one is still not thinking straight due to Azkaban, the other has an unhealthy belief in her own immortality the way some young people do. Hilarity ensues.**

 **Serpentine13: Val needs to be more disciplined to control her magic - that was Flitwick's primary concern. Having been bullied in his own past, he could care less about what Val does to the bullies - as long as she doesn't do it in the heat of the moment.**

 **Pac: Being angry at numerically superior bullies when the faculty is trying to be idiotically fair (emphasis on idiotically) doesn't help you. Being calm on the other hand might help you sneak anything from ink to improvised explosives in their school bags when they aren't looking. Non-confrontational does not mean not taking revenge. It only means not being found out. :)**

 **Meneldur: just read on!**

 **Disclaimer: Did Remus Lupin, a highly intelligent wizard experienced in both fighting the Dark Arts and espionage, never reconsider his attitude and decisions during Harry's third year? If yes, Harry Potter doesn't belong to me and this story is entirely for fun, not profit. He's all JK Rowling's.**

 **...**

Valeria had begun to see the time turner as the greatest opportunity she'd ever had, after getting to study magic. Not only did she get to multiply the amount of hours she had available per day, but she also got to study first-hand one of the more interesting and obscure aspects of magic. She'd often read in Magical Theory that magic overrode reality instead of producing effects explainable by natural laws however remotely. Nowhere was that more evident than in time-travel.

The time turner seemingly followed the self-consistency principle some theories on time travel aspired to... but only on the surface. A simple experiment had sufficed to show how easily linearity of cause and effect could be broken. She had made a sleeping potion and then drank it, but had not fallen asleep. Afterwards, she'd gone back in time and mixed some antidote into the potion without her past self seeing, which had resulted in the previously experienced events. A casual observer would not find anything wrong with that... until they realized her staying awake to go back in time afterwards would never had been possible unless she'd already gone back - a future action became the cause of a past action. This relatively minor paradox could have incredible results. Theoretically speaking, she could face any mortal peril and survive through future action.

Another question on time magic was about its long-term side effects. She'd found several cautionary tales about witches and wizards who de-aged themselves to oblivion or aged themselves into a decrepit corpse via careless time-travel. Since this was rather important to her own situation, she'd tried to check how biological age and duration of magical effects were affected, if at all. She'd used various spells and potions of herself with set durations and marked when the effects had faded. Then, she'd made some Aging Potion with which she'd temporarily increased her physical age and carefully measured the future growth of her own body. The following month having been stretched into several, she'd made measurements of actual growth and compared them with previous expectations. The results of all her experiments were consistent with each other and with the various cautionary takes. They also made no logical sense. Apparently, while short-term biological and magical processes appeared to progress normally, many effects with longer durations would always be consistent with calendar dates. No matter how many times she rolled back over a month, she'd still age only a month. No matter how many times she took a batch of Polyjuice potion through a reversal of time, it would still mature 21 calendar days after she added the lacewing flies. Presumably, witches and wizards going to longer trips through time would have their ages shifted by a corresponding amount... unless a bigger paradox happened.

That kind of arbitrary temporal consistency caused all sorts of problems - but might also create opportunities. Valeria had found a spell in a master-level Charms book in the Hogwarts library that might help her work out more precise - and thus exploitable - rules for her repeated time travels. It was about an enchantment that could read, evaluate, and react appropriately to a subject's proper age no matter what tricks and misdirections one might try to fool it. This Age Line looked like an awfully complicated spell, far beyond anything she'd tried so far. While not in the Restricted section and thus technically allowed by the school rules, it might have unfortunate side-effects if she didn't cast it correctly. Somehow she didn't see Professor Snape or Headmaster Dumbledore being amused if she managed to permanently evict anyone over the age of twenty from the Great Hall, or make the castle's main entrance impassable to anyone underage. Therefore, she'd decided to practice it well after midnight, in one of the abandoned classrooms in the third floor.

The blonde Slytherin girl was swiftly and silently approaching her destination under cover of silencing, disillusionment, disguising, and secrecy charms when she suddenly lost her footing. The invisible Shield Charm she always kept up to fend off surprise attacks did not help at all when the floor beneath her feet became frictionless between one step and the next. She slid several dozen feet down the corridor until she came to a stop within arms' reach of a flight of stairs that might have been quite painful had she taken a tumble down into it. Before she could recover however, everything went dark and there was a barrage of light but numerous blows against her shield. Taking fifty hits in under a second, the barrier collapsed, she was pelted by a barrage of tiny, round, hard objects, and then unconsciousness claimed her.

 **...**

"Well, well, well. This is a surprise." Severus Snape said as the unexpected visitor entered his office shortly after he'd finished with his rounds for the night.

"Evening, Severus." Remus Lupin greeted him cordially, though with a hint of uncertainly in his voice. It was to be expected, the Potions Master guessed. Lupin had never been especially brave in all the years he'd known him. From not standing up to his bullying friends out of fear of their abandoning him, to becoming as secretive as Snape himself out of fear of others' judgement, to never asking a girl out out of fear that his secret would come between them, the Head of Slytherin had always been surprised that Lupin had been sorted into Gryffindor.

"What brings you into my office so late at night Lupin, can't you see I'm busy?" He asked snidely while continuing with his ingredient preparations. "In fact, your presence in the castle has added considerably to my daily workload."

"I..." The other wizard paused, gulped, then begun anew. "It has been brought to my attention that my actions and thoughts might be influenced by a powerful curse."

"Might be?!" Snape snorted in incredulity as he lit a magical fire under the cauldron in preparation of making the Wolfsbane Potion. "Seeing as this is news to you Lupin, I regret to inform you that you have been bitten by Fenrir Greyback and as such you are cursed to turn into a slavering, man-eating beast under the influence of the full moon. My most sincere condolences." He frowned for a moment, but then smiled widely. Lupin took an involuntary step back. "What am I saying? I don't regret it at all. _Ironia canicula est_ , don't you agree? The cowardly lion becoming a thing most others fear."

"I am talking of the other curse." Lupin said through gritted teeth, trying to control a rage that was not entirely his own. "The one on the Defense post."

"Indeed?" Snape said lightly, adding the first few ingredients to the complicated potion. "My multiple searches of the castle over the past decade have revealed nothing. I guess we should add naive along with cowardly to the adjectives that describe you, then?"

"Severus, what are you talking about?" Lupin asked, a worried expression on his scarred face. "The curse is hidden quite well but is not impossible to find. It taxed my knowledge of revealing spells to its limit and took me a week's effort but I've confirmed its existence. I could show you my memories in the Headmaster's Pensieve if you doubt me but even if I didn't, the results speak for themselves. Thirty-six Defense Professors, none of them lasting more than a year, a third of them dead, a third incapacitated, and the rest would wish they were either."

"As you wish, Lupin." Snape said dryly. "By all means, let us entertain this delusion of yours. What about this supposed curse troubles you?"

"I... was told that the curse would influence me down a self-destructive path." The scarred wizard finally admitted after a few moments of silence. He was obviously uncomfortable talking to anyone about his delusions - as he should be, Snape thought. Even a less than sensible man, as Lupin had proven himself to be by following Black's and Potter's lead like a pup, would hesitate before admitting he was unhinged. "Reviewing my actions of late has brought up some alarming inconsistencies."

"Oh?" Snape smiled - Lupin was finally losing his mind, breaking under the strain of his transformations. Maybe Snape would finally have his revenge after nearly two decades of waiting. "Do tell."

"To my shame, I had suspected Black to be the traitor back during the war, even as he professed to suspect me. My suspicions were sadly confirmed after his horrible betrayal - and I could do nothing about it." Lupin scowled, obviously at the thought that the man he and Potter had so foolishly trusted had turned against them. Snape would have wished all the sorrows of the world upon them even as he basked in vindication... if not for Lily's murder making all other evils pale in insignificance. "When Professor Dumbledore offered me a position as a way to keep an eye on Harry, protect him from the newly escaped Black, I gladly accepted."

"I suppose you find all this history exceedingly interesting Lupin, but I don't have all night." Snape berated the weak man. "Get to the point."

"The point, Severus? Very well." He seemingly deflated under the seriousness of his professed responsibilities. "Don't you find it strange that I did not do my best to succeed in the task the Headmaster set for me?"

Of course he had. He'd even voiced his suspicions to the Headmaster, which had - perhaps foolishly - discounted them. Saying so at that very moment would do nobody any good however, so he remained silent. He merely rolled his eyes and nodded for Lupin to continue.

"I know this castle well, Severus. Black does, too. You have some idea just how well." Memories of the so-called Marauders always jumping him from around a corner when he least expected it, always turning up where they were neither needed nor allowed to be, surfaced suddenly. With a mental exertion of Occlumency, Snape banished them from his thoughts - at least for the moment. "What you don't know is that both of us discovered several passages during our school years, passages we never shared with anyone."

"What?" Snape sharply asked, potion momentarily forgotten.

"That was exactly my reaction when I reviewed my actions of the past few months just before coming to you." Lupin said with a self-deprecating smile. "Some of those passages bypass the ring of Dementors surrounding the school, as well as Dumbledore's umbrella of defensive enchantments. Rationalizations echo even now in my thoughts; how if Black could escape from Azkaban he could certainly enter this castle without needing to use them." He laughed with not a trace of mirth. "But that's all those thoughts were; foolish rationalizations. Thoughts a logical person would have barely entertained, let alone allowed to limit his actions for months. Still believe there's no curse in the Defense post, Severus?"

It took several minutes for Snape to come out of his surprise-incuded stupor and by then the potion had been ruined. He'd have to start from the beginning but that didn't bother him. What did was everything Lupin had shared with him so far. Could he be under the subtle influences of some powerful curse? Could both of them be? Snape had certainly wanted the Defense post badly enough. And the revelation that Sirius bloody Black had access to this school any time he wanted... that was unnerving as well.

"Let's talk to the Headmaster." Snape finally said. "At the very least he should be involved because of his duty to the school. Plus, another perhaps wiser head would probably help in this problem."

 **...**

Peter Pettigrew was scared. That was hardly anything new; he'd been scared of one thing or another for his entire life. But his new fear was worse by far than anything he'd ever previously experienced. Worse than the fear of being friendless, abandoned. Worse than the bullying he'd avoided by attaching himself to those more successful than himself. Worse than even the fear of failing the Dark Lord.

Bellatrix Lestrange, the Dark Lord's most insanely dedicated and capable servant, had escaped. She had not done so on her on though, oh no. She'd taken several other Death Eaters along for the ride... as well as her cousin. Sirius Black would never had been caught dead following a dark witch or wizard, and he hated his family with a passion. But that hatred, Peter knew very well, was nothing before his loathing and rage towards the traitor responsible for his best friend's murder. And however much the two Black cousins hated each other, they were also family. It was possible that they'd set their differences aside to hunt down a certain rat - the one ultimately responsible for the Dark Lord's fall, and the Potters' deaths.

Peter was only ever a mediocre wizard. He'd never claimed otherwise. He had just enough skill in Transfiguration to become an Animagus with a bit of help, just enough skill in Potions to be useful as a brewer, just enough skill in Dueling to make his mastery of stealth and deception work for him in a tight spot. Not unlike Crabbe or Goyle, he was useful as a hanger-on but not as a real friend to Dumbledore's people or an Inner-Circle Death Eater. And that was one thing he'd vowed to change at all costs.

Becoming a double agent had been easy. Misdirection, subterfuge, information-gathering, disguise, infiltration: all those things came naturally to him. He'd managed to thoroughly deceive not only his former friends but the great and mighty Albus Dumbledore. That was a feat he'd never heard of anyone managing before - not even the Dark Lord himself. Despite being no better than average in any field of magic, he'd become truly viable for his skills for the first time. His reports were one of the primary reasons the Dark Lord had all but won in the first war - and Peter could be proud. And then that damn prophesy had become his master's doom. Peter had to flee the Dark Lord's surviving servants and his still-living former friends. He'd been good at that, too; even when Black had tried to corner him, he'd managed to throw him off-balance enough to fake his death, unleash dangerous magic that wounded Black, and frame him for the death of the muggles caught in the crossfire.

His life since that fateful day had been one of leisure, safety, and good food. He had never stopped being a spy though. It was amazing how many things one could learn by living under the same roof as a prominent, pureblood, Dumbledore-friendly family. To that add all the spying he did in Hogwarts where he spent ten months out of a year next to the scions of every important family in magical Britain, and his being in the same room as the Boy-Who-Lived and, well. If the opportunity ever presented itself, he'd have a wealth of information to give to a new master.

But now with both Death Eaters and Black out for his blood, Peter knew he had to flee again. Unfortunately, he couldn't. The Ministry had been crazy enough to bring Dementors around the school's grounds and Bellatrix had one upped their craziness by making Inferi. The aura of fear the Dementors exuded had him shaking too much to dare go through their perimeter even as a rat, even in the underground passages. And the Inferi didn't have working eyes to see. They stared at you in some other horrible way that ignored disguises, their unnatural malice burning in their empty eye sockets. Peter didn't know whether his animagus form would conceal him and he was not eager to find out. He'd been contemplating if he should stage his 'death' and disappear again, when things became even worse.

The rats of the castle were disappearing. Nobody but him, Mrs Norris, and possibly McGonagal had noticed, and only he had glimpsed the new horror that crawled through the corridors now. The corpses of rats, dead and yet walking. What kind of diseased, deranged mind had come up with rat Inferi? His money was on Bellatrix - and that thought terrified him. He had no idea how much the other servants of the Dark lord knew about him but if anyone knew of his animagus form, it would be her. And if it was, Peter did not plan to be caught by one of those new horrors. He'd followed Mrs Norris' example and stayed in the most secure areas of the castle, never daring to set a foot outside. Ron's bed in the Gryffindor dormitories had become his entire world.

He was trapped and he had no idea what to do about it.

 **...**

Valeria returned to consciousness through the familiar jolt of a Reviving Spell. Enchanting a ring not only to wake her up at five-hour increments to get the most out of her time turner but also to revive her in case she was ever knocked out due to hostile magic had been so worth it. Not knowing the exact situation she was in, she decided to play possum until she could learn more.

"I got her legs." A boy's voice said from right next to her feet.

"And I her arms." An identical voice matched it from above her head.

"Merlin, she's heavy." Both voices said in unison as their owners lifted her off the floor.

"You're lucky she can't hear you right now." A girl's voice she immediately identified as Tracey told them. "Talking about a witch's weight is one of the fastest ways to be shortened by head, you know."

"The lower head." Another girl said dryly - Daphne. That was definitely her. "Did you find her wand yet? We don't want her cursing us to oblivion before we can explain this is an intervention."

"You said you could take her." The two boys complained in tandem. They were familiar, but certainly not Harry, Ron, or Neville. Valeria's still-aching head couldn't think clearly enough to remember them though.

"In a duel? Sure." Daphne said casually. "If she starts throwing nasty spells at random with no care for anyone's safety? Then you're on your own."

"Great." Boy one say. "How far is it?" Boy two asked. "We can't keep carrying her forever." Both told Daphne at once.

"You're supposed to be professionals, right?" Tracey mocked. Valeria felt the touch of magic as a spell was cast on her.

 _"Pennagravitas!"_

As her body became a fraction of its original weight, the steps of the weird quartet that had practically abducted her sped up. For the next ten minutes or so, their small group crisscrossed the castle, taking obscure routes and avoiding potential patrols.

"We're all idiots." Daphne said as a door closed and they all finally stopped - Valeria couldn't help but agree. "We could have levitated her all the way here."

"Never mind that now." One of the boys asked. "Revive her so we can get to the bottom of this." Said the other.

"Hey!" Tracey said angrily. "She might be behaving strangely but she's still our friend. Besides, you came to us. You agreed to this."

"Suit yourself, little snake." The boys mocked her. "Just don't come crying to us when a newly emergent Dark Lady bites you in your cute little ass."

"Val isn't a Dark Lady." Daphne said in an amused tone as Tracey mumbled curses under her breath. "She's only mildly challenged, morally speaking."

"Whatever you say, Blonder." Both boys said at once. No, surely not. Were they the Weasley Twins?

"Blonder?" Daphne asked in the same tone.

"Sure! Your short friend there is Blonde." One of the twins said. "And that makes you Blonder." The other twin said. "We got to tell you apart somehow." They both said and laughed.

"Say Daphne..." Tracey asked with false sweetness. "Would Val show us how to brew the Draught of Eternal Chastity?"

"Hey!" Both boys exclaimed indignantly. "That's way below the belt!"

"Of course it is!" Both girls giggled. "That's precisely the point."

"Come on George." George said. "We've been in the company of these girl-shaped monsters long enough."

"Right you are Fred." Fred agreed. "We better leave now while the even worst monster is still unconscious. Personally, I always thought the Chamber of Secrets opens every time a girl is born - just look at Ginny."

"You are both idiots." Daphne said in a long-suffering tone. Valeria heard a sudden whipping sound that probably was Daphne's wand holster being used and then she was jolted for the second time in twenty minutes.

" _Rennervate!_ "


	61. Reconciliation

**a1993: Not as hard to do as one would think. Valeria isn't the only character to have clever ideas.**

 **Talon Blu: Wait for it!**

 **He-SpecOps: If I make the chapters longer than 2500-3500 words, I'll have to update slower than daily, counting both my stories. Do you prefer frequent updates or longer chapters?**

 **Serpentine13: Yep. Beyond that, he's also waiting for the Pinkness Curse to be lifted before he flees.**

 **Urazz: There's a reason for that - read on! Honestly, you seem to be picking up future plot points too frequently - are you sure you aren't a Seer?**

 **Renata MM: It's pretty much canon. Every single DADA teacher we're aware of fell victim to their own greatest fear related to the DADA position, through their own actions. Quirrel failed Voldemort and was abandoned to die. Lockhart tried to claim credit for another heroic story and was both discovered and lost his own memories. Lupin's lycanthropy became widely known when he forgot to take his potion and wounded his friend while nearly killing or turning some students. Moody was blindsided by a Death Eater because he wasn't prepared enough, and used in a plot against his friend Dumbledore. Barty Crouch Jr. never saw his master's triumph or the other Death Eaters being punished for disloyalty, was captured by Snape and Dumbledore, and had his soul sucked by the Dementors he'd long avoided. Harry Potter had his group discovered by Umbridge, leading to the sacking of Dumbledore and indirectly to the loss of Sirius. Umbridge was tricked by a "mudblood", and defeated and almost certainly tortured by a tribe of "half-breeds", while her beloved Minister lost his job. Severus Snape was forced to kill his own mentor, be reviled for something he wasn't, set himself up to be murdered by Voldemort later, and came to believe Lily's son had to die for wizarding Britain to live. If all of that doesn't indicate how the curse subtly twisted all those people's actions, I don't know what would.**

 **Slytherin's Strumpet: They're neat and useful, in a horrible sort of way.**

 **nintschibintschi: Valeria is a muggleborn with one squib grandparent. Her mother is a diplomat and her father is into a line of work a bit shadier than that. And no, he isn't a lawyer.**

 **Meneldur: The Twins didn't approach Daphne and Tracey: it was the other way around.**

 **The Viking Stranger: The Twins want to keep the map a secret so they haven't asked him. They probably checked Ron's dormitory while their brother was asleep, but couldn't find anything. That aside, not many know of Pettigrew and what happened to him. The entire incident was hushed up by the Ministry - which is why most people don't know Sirius never received a trial.**

 **ro781727: Valeria will lie, of course. Especially to the Twins. If they aren't satisfied with her story however...**

 **Disclaimer: Did Dumbledore not take precautions against the curse on the Defense Post after over three decades' worth of harmed Professors? If not, I don't own the Harry Potter series; it belongs to JK Rowling.**

 **...**

"Come on, mate! You can't be serious!"

Ron Weasley was fuming. Harry and Neville, his two best mates, had always nagged at him about his behavior towards the Slytherin girls - especially that suprememly annoying blonde terror. He had not blamed them for that - Fred and George had told him horror stories about how sooner or later most boys would make fools of themselves if a girl asked or even implied she wanted them to. What really made his blood boil however was Harry becoming more and more insistest on changing Ron's mind about the whole situation.

"Look Ron, you can't possibly believe Valeria cursed your rat." Harry repeated for the upteenth time. "She wouldn't do something like that."

"Why not?" Ron snarled back as Neville rolled his eyes and a giggling Lavender skipped past their place by the fireplace to show her new horoscope to Parvati. "She's a dark witch, mate. You said it yourself; she used runes written in blood. Do you know how dark blood magic is?"

"Ron, don't. Just don't, OK?" Harry's reply was a bit colder than normal. "She helped save me from the Dursleys. She helped all of us with Potions. She helped save the school from Voldemort - twice." Harry was getting angry too, now, and suddenly Ron realized why. His best mate's next words confirmed it. "You can't accuse someone of being an evil witch or wizard just because they got an ability some consider dark. Look at me; I'm a Parselmouth. Does that make me evil?"

"What of the inverse, though?" Ron said, in his anger making a bad move in their chess game. He was about to take it back, when he changed his mind. They had enough things to argue about already. "What about someone showing how good they are, having everyone believe them, while they're secretly practicing dark magic and hurting others?" He kept talking over his friend's protests. "Don't tell me that's ridiculous; we know _Riddle_ did it. It would be a perfect tactic for a dark witch or wizard to hide their activities."

"That's enough!" For a moment there Ron was sure Harry would hex him, possibly Neville too. "I know you're worried about Scabbers, Ron, but to accuse our friend of being like... like that monster!" Harry had actually drawn his wand! For a moment Ron thought that would be that for their friendship but then the other boy calmed down instead of exploding. A small smile formed in his face, even. "Get up, Ron. And get Scabbers. If you insist Valeria cursed your rat and since the witch in Magical Menagerie couldn't even change back his color, there's only one thing we can do."

"What's that?" Neville asked, speaking up for the first time in their little argument in confusion.

"We go find Valeria and have her reverse any magic she did on Scabbers." Harry exclaimed and suddenly Ron was looking for some way -any way- to escape the Gryffindor common room. "Even if she had nothing to do with Scabbers' sickness she could tell us if a curse was there. And at least Scabbers will no longer be pink."

"I dunno mate." Ron said uneasily. "It's getting pretty late, don't ya think?"

"We got the Cloak." Harry insisted. "Besides, you've been harping on about how ridiculous Scabbers looked since first year."

"But if she's in the Slytherin dormitories, how'd we get to her? If she isn't, how do we find her?"

"Hedwig." Harry said with satisfaction. "Owls can find people, right? We send her with a message. If Val is in her common room and Hedwig can't enter, Hedwig returns with no reply and we know to abort. If Hedwig delivers the note, Val knows to find us. And if we really need to, Hedwig could lead us to Val's location." His best mate smiled at him. "So stop mopping and go get Scabbers while I'm getting the Cloak."

Ron was afraid of that. Of all the nights they could have had this argument, why did it have to be the one Fred and George chose to prank that bloody snake? Worse, what would happen if Harry learned Ron had helped them? The twins were older, bolder, and awesome at sneaking and pranking, but they didn't want to leave anything to chance with this prank. They'd come to Ron because they knew - they even admitted it! - that he was so good at strategy and stuff. How would he get at that too-clever-for-her-own-good snake if he were in Fred and George's place using all he knew about her?

After getting over his smugness that two of his older siblings had come to him for something, Ron had enjoyed the challenge and its potential results. He'd never again be ickle Ronniekins if he succeeded and the dark witch who'd cursed Scabbers would be on the receiving end for once. So he'd given it a lot of thought. Campbell's advantages were her always using detection spells to avoid traps, always keeping up a Shield Charm to fend off surprise attacks, and being too good at sneaking and disguise to be found. Fred and George claimed they could find her any time they wanted and Ron didn't dispute that claim. He'd never seen anyone better at moving around Hogwarts than them, after all. His job was to find a way to beat Campbell's other advantages and after a few days he'd managed it. Yes, she could detect magic, but those spells couldn't see very far. If the twins had a way to force her into the trap before she got close enough to detect it, she wouldn't see it coming. Preferably a way that worked around magical defenses... like that ice spell Daphne used to make people slip and fall. As for the shield, tricks wouldn't work through it - enough force to break it was needed. But what of a trick that brought a lot of force in a short time? Those joke items Fred and George used were harmful magic - if barely. If they could hit her with enough joke items at once, the shield should break...

"Oh come on!" Harry said as he returned with the Cloak. "Ron, why didn't you get Scabbers yet?"

Ron sighed and admitted defeat. Delaying tactics would obviously not dissuade Harry now and Ron didn't want to lie to his mates. He sat up and went to get his horribly pink rat. At worst, if the twins had managed to nail her tonight he'd have his brothers' support in facing Campbell. Harry wouldn't be too mad - it wasn't a really harmful prank after all. How bad could it be?

 **...**

"What in the name of Yog-Sothoth were you thinking?" The furious blonde Slytherin witch demanded as dangerous-looking sparks fell from her bare hands.

"Who'd you reckon Yog Sothoth is, George?" George asked with a sideways glance to the other two girls present. What he saw was not good.

"Dunno. Some great ancient Dark Lord Slytherins worship, Fred?" Fred replied and copied his movements. Daphne and Tracey were staying out of the argument, the little snake traitors.

"OUCH!" Both twins said in unison, rubbing their left ears. Something had grabbed them and then twisted - or someone. The very angry girl before them that had just made a twisting motion with each hand was probably it, but how had she managed it from all the way across the room?

"You don't get to ignore me." Valeria growled. "Not after your little stunt of making that corridor frictionless. A foot or two more and I'd have fallen down that flight of stairs, possibly breaking my neck."

"Please. As if we master pranksters would botch something like t- OUCH!" Both twins rubbed their right ears this time, shooting glares at the shorter, much less imposing girl. "Stop doing that!"

"No." The Slytherin girl said firmly. "How'd you get past my Shield Charm?"

"Val, do you really think that's important now?" Tracey finally involved herself in the argument.

"Don't think I forgot about you two." Valeria said, pointing at her two best friends accusingly but far less angrily. "And with Death Eaters about, of course it's important if someone can break through our defenses." She returned her glare to the two boys in the room. "So spill."

"As us no questions and we'll tell you no li... OK, OK, we'll spill! No need to get nasty about it!" The twins wisely changed their minds when they saw the flames Valeria was holding in either hand.

"We've always been good at enchanting, haven't we George?" George started the explanation.

"Potions too, Fred." Fred said with a serious nod.

"So we put a simple contact-trigger _Finite_ on a few pebbles..." George continued.

"...then dropped all the pebbles at once on you." Fred supplied with some satisfaction at a job well done.

"Shield Charm go poof!" Both twins said descriptively.

"Someone suggested we use fireworks or joke potions." Fred admitted, exchanging glances with his twin. "But getting multiple doses of those might hurt." The other twin finished. They looked carefully at the girls to gauge their reaction. The brunette was smirking. The taller blonde was pretending to be a snakesickle. The shorter, more dangerous blonde seemed... thoughtful. That didn't bode well.

"Just for admitting that, you get to keep your ears." Valeria said and Tracey giggled. Daphne merely raised a pale eyebrow in question. "Oh they aren't off the hook yet." Valeria said to her two closest friends. "They do get points for at least thinking about safety though... and where would I find other enchanters to talk shop with in this school if I murdered them?" Everyone nodded at the practicality of that thought, even the twins. They knew she wouldn't carry out that threat of course; she had yet to off Malfoy or Parkinson after all. They could respect the sentiment in which it was given though.

"Which brings us to your side of the story." She said, fixing Tracey and Daphne with a serious stare. "I doubt you helped them so you could interrogate me about my... unusual coming and goings. Something like that... wouldn't be like you."

"Umm, Val?" Tracey said with a wince. "It kind of is."

"Why are you all walking on eggshells about this?" Daphne suddenly demanded of the other three conspirators. Then she turned to Valeria accusingly. "We are not at fault, Val. OK, maybe Fred and George are, a bit." The pureblood scion rolled her eyes at the Weasleys' smirks. "But Tracey and I? We were worried about you. You've gradually become more distant, less talkative, less involved in everything since the start of the year - either with us or with our classes." Hands on hips, the taller witch looked down at Valeria with a storm of emotions threatening to burst through her calm facade. Anger, worry, exasperation, all danced in her eyes if not the rest of her face. "You've become less healthy, too. You're as pale as I am now, and it isn't natural. To that add black circles under your eyes, exxagerated nervous tics, less than stable reactions to everyone, and lost weight." Slytherin's ice princess shook her head, long silver tresses dancing in the near-darkness of the abandoned classroom. "If I didn't know better I'd say you were on drugs - or had developed a serious addiction to Firewhiskey. But bad as those might be, they don't explain the... inconsistencies."

Valeria eyed her best friend sharply. The others seemed to be very interested in what was being said but the twins looked mostly clueless and Tracey had a look of mild confusion on her own face. Only Daphne seemed to have a knowing look, her very sharp gaze fixing Valeria unwaveringly. Unfortunately, she didn't know how to explain this to her friends, not with that magical contract Snape had made her sign.

"How much can you tell us?" Daphne suddenly asked and Valeria felt like kissing her for providing a way out. Fred and George would enjoy watching that, she was certain.

"Nothing." She said carefully. Triggering the contract by accident would be exceedingly foolish - and just as painful. "I am under a vow." Easiest option to get around a magical binding on sharing information was to lie - but do it in such a way that the lies amounted to the same thing, really.

"I see." Daphne said. "An inability to share information doesn't excuse horrible behavior, though." The pureblood scion stated. "You will take care of yourself better and you will spend more times with your friends. Or else-"

At that exact moment the door swung open and a snow-white owl flew into the abandoned classroom, landing on Valeria's left shoulder and hooting in satisfaction. Steps followed but nobody appeared until Harry pulled the Cloak of Invisibility off Ron, Neville, himself, and a horribly pink rat.

"Hey everyone." He greeted them cheerfully. "What's up?"

 **...**

"When I get out of this I'm going to kill you!" The young woman shouted as she pulled at the rope wrapped around her right ankle. "Do you hear me, Sirius Black?"

"Promises, promises." The wizard in question smirked at her antics without fear of reprisal. He'd charmed the rope unbreakable and used sticking charms on both the knot around her ankle and the one around one of the Shrieking Shack's support columns. Hestia Jones was not getting anywhere anytime soon.

"You disappear for days, return with that bottle of utterly vile potion, make me drink it, and when it heals me you still keep me prisoner." She kept shouting. "You truly deserve Azkaban!"

"I didn't disappear for days; you were just out of it every time I came. Who do you think _Scourgified_ you, miss-too-wounded-to-go-to-the-bathroom?" He'd let the Azkaban comment go. She had no idea what she was talking about after all. "And I was late because not only had Madam Pomfrey been attacked, but someone had prepared an ambush in the passage I used."

"A likely story!" The ungrateful woman growled. "How did you know about wizards trying to ambush you? There is such a thing as secrecy spells."

"I guess I am just that good." He said with a smirk. That, and a dog's greatly superior senses - not that he'd tell her about that. "Now eat your breakfast."

Practically shoving the plate in the infuriating woman's face, he went through the near-ambush again in his mind. Apparently Azkaban had left him less sane than he'd so far believed, because what he heard and smelled back there was impossible - or should be.

How could Moony and Snivellus be working together?

 **...**

 _"Specialis Revelio!"_

The pink rat remained remarkably nonmagical. It shouldn't have.

 _"Colovaria!"_

The pink rat remained annoying pink. Valeria's patience was nearing its limits.

 _"Finite Incantantem! Oblittero Veneficium! Homenum Revelio!"_

The Slytherin witch cursed up a storm, jumping up and kicking her seat in the process.

"Performance issues?" Asked Daphne solemnly while Tracey snickered. Unlike the Weasley Twins, her closest friends had accepted her inability to share her secrets - barely. Since then, they'd insisting on accompanying her the majority of the day, spending as much time as possible with her. They studied together, they practiced spells together, they went for walks in the castle grounds together - they even took baths together. Valeria would have been mortified if she wasn't already; not only did her friends have to save her from the subtle downward spiral she'd put herself in, they had also been right about her addiction. It wasn't something as little as drugs or even unwise use of magic however; she'd been addicted to extra time, extra experiences, trying to do everything she could, every single day. Given the nonsensical consistency of Time Magic, what she'd been doing had been far worse than anything except possibly abuse of Soul Magic or Blood Magic.

"It's this bloody rat!" She tried to calm down; she didn't want to turn her anger on her friends, not after everything they'd done for her. "I've checked for active magic, attempted to change its color, tried to end ongoing spells. I've even used an obscure counterspell that disrupts enchantments and the effects of potions - all to no effect."

"Maybe your initial color-changing charm clashed with existing magic?" Tracey theorized. As the closest Slytherin House had to an expert in Care of Magical Creatures, she was rather interested in the very strange rat. "I mean, common rats don't live as long as Weasley has owned this one. Even magical rats don't survive as long as his brother Percy had it before him. Some modifications through the Familiar bond, perhaps?"

"I don't know..." Valeria said warily. She had no idea of a true familiar would give the one result she had managed to get out of her spells - one spell specifically. Given past examples of similar results however... "I think I need to take this to an expert. Hagrid might know, but he doesn't know much magical theory - all his spells are pretty much intent-based."

"Good luck finding a way to Hogsmeade through the Dementor patrols." Tracey snorted, but Daphne's gaze bore into Valeria. From the other blonde's murderous expression, the Slytherin witch knew any attempts to ditch the other two girls or do something that could even remotely be considered stupid would not end well. The problem was, Valeria had to get to a magical expert and not only because of Ron Weasley's demands.

She really had to know why the rat registered as a person to her Soul Magic, just as a certain Diary had... and avoid the Twins while at it. After their latest confrontation ending as it did, she had more than Death Eaters to look out for.


	62. House War

**Urazz: Yeah, excessive use of powerful magic can adversely affect people physically. As for your other predictions, you'll have to wait and see.**

 **Serpentine13: You mean sacrifice him in a Blood Magic ritual to gain animagus powers? Probably not.**

 **The Viking Stranger: Listening/monitoring charms need at least some attention from the caster. Use them too much and you end up like Dumbledore, spending all your time spying on everyone and not doing anything else. Dropping them means you then have to retrieve your spy and recast them. Recording equipment and preprogrammed commands have the advantage of storing the information so you can use it later, even if you don't have direct control. There are two ways to get around those problems but as Valeria is not a strong enough necromancer to command her minions remotely (yet), she'll have to use the other option. Not going to tell you what it is though - you have to wait and see.**

 **a1993: Glad to hear it. Hopefully you'll like this chapter too.**

 **ro781727: Flitwick, Vector, and Babbling are good at magical theory. Dumbledore too, though Val wouldn't go to him. Val can't change Pettigrew back because human transfiguration is already really hard; untransfiguring something to its original form when you have no idea what said form is... that would be next to impossible. For the rest, read on.**

 **StevenG: It's a question of priorities and assumptions. Read on to find out.**

 **Disclaimer: do some fanfiction stories give wizards trouble blocking muggle weapons when spells that can blow up streets or tear down bridges are considered blockable? If yes, Harry Potter is the property of JK Rowling and this story is only for fun, not profit.**

 **...**

The Yule holidays were approaching and Valeria was finishing yet another practice session on detection charms. Her chair was glowing a very faint yellow in her augmented sight, her dish and fork a similarly faint green, but those were just the distractions. An almost imperceptible silver-grey aura surrounded the silver cup full of her preferred apple juice and, nearly perfectly hidden behind that aura, the juice itself glowed a vibrant yellow, like molten gold. Smirking, she flicked her wand several times at the offending objects before sitting down for breakfast.

"Hey Campbell." Marcus Flint said in a conspiratorial tone. "Any other good ideas for the next game? We need to keep up our winning streak." The rest of the Slytherin Quidditch team turned to look at them in interest, even Malfoy. Prejudice against mudbloods or not, a victory for the House took priority.

"Is that about Harry's new broom?" She asked the older boy, not very interested. She was far more concerned with whether her latest spells had worked as intended. Continuous practice had allowed her to get good enough in both detection charms and switching spells to pull them off silently but she was not sure her castings were strong enough to work at a distance, especially for the latter.

"Of course it is, it's a freaking Firebolt!" Draco said hotly. "Then again, you and the other two have been cozying up to Potter and his pals for years now. Probably selling out our House in exchange for marriage contracts because nobody else would take you."

"Hey Astoria!" Valeria said sweetly. "Draco here just implied that the House of Greengrass is whoring its heiress out!"

"No I didn't - OW!" The blonde dandy yelped and jumped off his seat as a strong Stinging Hex found its way to his rump. Unfortunately, it had been preceded by a Sticking Charm and a Softening Charm, whispered by the narrow-eyed younger Greengrass witch before even Valeria had called. Softened to the consistency of wet paper and stuck to his chair, a large portion of Draco Malfoy's robe did not follow its wearer in his sudden jump... and as a pureblood, Draco did not wear muggle clothing under his robes.

"Nice pants, Malfoy." Blaize Zabini said as laughter spread in the Slytherin table. "Is that the Malfoy House seal embroidered on them?" Naturally, the blonde boy yelped again and started jumping around frantically, trying to both see the extent of the damage and cover it up with his hands - and failing dismally at both. The other Houses were turning towards the commotion now so Valeria let slip a long-suffering sigh and flicked her wand three times.

 _"Finite! Expelliarmus! Reparo!"_

The Softening and Sticking Charms were ended, Draco was forced to let go of his own backside, the torn piece floated up into place, and the tear was sewn shut without a mark. The blonde muggleborn witch smirked at the mortified pureblood idiot.

"Honestly Draco, you could have fixed it yourself instead of dancing around and putting up a show for all the other Houses." The dandy's face went from pale red to white and he angrily opened his mouth to retort but Valeria beat him to the punch. "However rich you are, however powerful your family, nobody will respect you if anyone could ruin your clothes while you take a stroll down Diagon Alley and you aren't a good enough wizard to identify your attacker or prevent the incident."

The furious boy marched out of the Great Hall while the rest of their House talked about the incident in barely audible whispers. Some of them were angry, others sounded approving, and there were a good many neutrals or entirely indifferent. Following Flitwick's request - at least to the extent it was possible - has made quite a few of the bullies slowly lose the fear they had towards her but had also gained her a bit of standing within the House with every diplomatic resolution she succeeded in.

"He's lucky my sister and Tracey are running late." Astoria said, tossing her dyed-black hair angrily. "Daphne would have switched his privates with a peanut butter sandwich for that."

"She'd better not have." Valeria said as every boy in range winced and quite a few of the girls giggled. "I don't like having my appetite spoiled by curse-level disgusting visuals." She bit down a piece of bacon and chewed thoughtfully, avoiding anything with peanut butter or that looked like a sandwich. "As for you, you little miscreant, don't forget about House unity." She pointed at the younger girl accusingly. "You would be better off Body-Binding him while he slept then leaving him in the middle of the common room instead of attacking him where our Head of House could notice. Besides, I thought you liked him."

"He's mine to deal with as I see fit!" Astoria said decisively. "The earlier he accepts that, the easier it'll be for him."

"That's all well and good ladies-" Marcus Flint interrupted "-but it doesn't help us any with Quidditch. We can't allow Gryffindor to get a lead in points - which they will with Potter's Firebolt."

"You might be an excellent player Marcus, but you suck at most things to do with numbers." Valeria commented off-handedly. "That Firebolt can only help Harry catch the Snitch earlier, meaning less time for the rest of the Gryffindor team to score goals. Ultimately, it makes their victories easier at the expense of their point totals."

"So what?" Bole said angrily. "That still doesn't help us if Gryffindor wins in every game. Malfoy was right; you're trying to protect your boyfriend."

"Merlin save me from brain-dead idiots." The third-year girl rolled her eyes despite several older boys glowering at her now. "You're all big boys, aren't you? In the game with Ravenclaw, beat them up - especially Chang. It's not as if Quidditch players can be expelled from a game for violence."

"Hooch will give free shots to Ravenclaw, you stupid bitch!" Pansy Parkinson interjected. "Our team will lose!"

"Not unless the Snitch is caught, they won't. Hit Chang till she can't fly straight and then Draco is the only one who can end the game." Valeria shrugged. "You guys are big and tough - you could manage a five-hour game. The bookworms can't - especially not wounded. Have Draco end it when you're a thousand points ahead or something." Silence fell on the Slytherin table as everybody else stared at her as if seeing her for the first time.

"Are you sure you're OK, Campbell?" Blaise asked. "What potions have you been drinking?"

"Of course I'm OK - Chang is just a bitch." She stared at the Ravenclaw table and the small blonde girl that seemed to be in her own world amid the other 'claws. Ginny Weasley and Colin Creevey had mentioned her situation to the Carrow Twins and those two had brought word to her. She couldn't approach the Ravenclaws or interfere without causing greater problems - not with her notoriety - but acting indirectly... "Tell you what, Flint. If you knock Chang off her broom at least three times, I'll get you a copy of a single NEWT paper two hours before the examination starts."

"Don't joke about that, Campbell!" Flint hissed. "Nobody has managed to cheat in NEWTs for decades; a third year won't be the first."

"It won't be cheating as you won't be breaking the rules and I won't be giving the exams." Seeing a commotion on the Gryffindor table, she smirked. "Besides, nobody had managed to nail the Weasley Twins with their own pranks either."

All of Slytherin turned where she was pointing to watch the festivities. One of the Twins was stuck in his chair, while the other had been Body-Bound with his fork in mid-air. Unfortunately for them their real prank had been only almost perfectly hidden, and Valeria had switched her drink with Katie Bell's. The furious Gryffindor witch was hitting both Twins with every spell in her arsenal while the opportunity lasted, and had a good reason for it. The modified invisibility potion had turned everything she wore but her smallclothes invisible, and the enchantment upon it had written WEASLEYS ROCK on both her forehead and apparently bare back with glowing pink letters.

The two pranksters had a difficult weekend ahead of them...

 **...**

"Get up, Campbell!" Pansy shouted way too early in the morning for Valeria's liking. "Get up or you're dead." The other girl's words were empty and they both knew it; the runic enchantments Valeria had added to her room only allowed entry to Professors and herself. Using the Gouging Spell, she'd carved seven concentric circles of seventy-seven runes upon the stone floor under her bed, barring the passage of people, objects, and magic she had not specifically allowed at the time of the casting, ending unwanted magic that managed to pass through anyway, vanishing unwanted objects, and banishing unwanted people. Powering the powerful magic had required a lot of work and blood-replenishing potions, ritually burning the collected blood, filling the runes with the ashes, and heating them until they fused to the stone. It was the most powerful piece of magic she'd ever attempted and no student could overcome it - except possibly Tom Riddle when he was one fifty years ago. Unfortunately, sound was something she had not thought to block when she'd designed it.

"Pansy it's Sunday, we only have a few days of lessons before the Yule break, and you're far from my favorite person." She yawned, rubbed her eyes, and drew her wand from under her pillow. "Unless your explanation is either important or amusing, I'm switching your eyes with rat tails."

"Oh no! You're not threatening your way out of this one. Look at what they did to me!" The Parkinson heiress sounded angrier than any other time Valeria had ever heard her little outbursts. "For that matter, look at yourself!"

Sighing, the blonde Slytherin muggleborn took stock of her own body. She was still short and less slim than was fashionable, and any curves she might have when she was older had only begun to make an appearrance. Her skin was a bit redder than normal, though that could have been a side effect of all the unusual magics she was experimenting with. Her hair was still the same length and... Oh. She looked at Pansy for confirmation and found it; the other girl's hair was a peculiar shade of red, almost orange, and she had way too many freckles. Glancing at a mirror nearby, Valeria saw that she had them too.

"Satisfied with my explanation?" Pansy said more angry than mocking. "All the third-year Slytherins look like Weasleys and it's your fault. Draco is throwing a fit." It figured that the pureblood dandy would be up earlier than even the girls to finish his morning pampering in time - and that his reaction to this would be even worse. Sighing, Valeria resigned herself to a far earlier and more active Sunday morning than she'd planned for.

"OK, Pansy. Gather every Slytherin from our year." Better have Pansy be on the receiving end of Daphne's initial reaction. "War council in the common room in ten minutes." As the other girl left, she looked regretfully at her notes, the list she wouldn't get to research this day.

 _Soul Anchor? Transfiguration gone wrong? Animal Shape Curse?_ _ _Soul Transmigration?_ Experimental breeding of sentient rat? Animagus?_

From more likely to less, all the possible explanations for the condition of Ron's rat she needed to check, though some of them were quite absurd. Who would want to make truly sentient rats, or spend years and years as one if he had the ability to change back at will? Oh well, she could always get back to checking them later. Right then, the third-year Slytherins had other business to attend to.

Waging war on the Weasley Twins.

 **...**

 _Twenty-one million, eight hundred and fifty four thousand and sixty-one. Twenty-one million, eight hundred and fifty four thousand and sixty-two. Twenty-one million, eight hundred and fifty four thousand and sixty-three. Twenty-one million, eight hundred and fifty four thousand and sixty-four. Twenty-one million, eight hundred and fifty four thousand and sixty-five..._

The prisoner had taken up counting words. He'd become quite good at it, fast enough to keep up with the horrenous punishment of each letter being seared into his very being without pause. He'd once heard that counting sheep was a good way to fall asleep but unfortunately, his punishment did not allow him such luxury. Much as it did not allow him to forget or ignore it, go insane or perish to avoid it, or have access to any other sensory input to distract him. His predicament was so terrible precisely because it could be eternal. Magic allowed the greatest miracles to be realized just as often as the most horrendous nightmares and his attempt at the former had been turned into the latter through the actions of an enemy so horribly insidious he'd never even entertained the possibility of their existence. For that failure alone, perhaps his punishment was deserved.

 _Twenty-one million, eight hundred and fifty four thousand and eighty-one. Twenty-one million, eight hundred and fifty four thousand and eighty-two. Twenty-one million, eight hundred and fifty four thousand and eighty-three. Twenty-one million, eight hundred and fifty four thousand and eighty-four. Twenty-one million, eight hundred and fifty four thousand and eighty-five..._

 **...**

The following few days till the Yule holidays the entire student body found it near-impossible to concentrate on their lessons. Their attention was drawn into the small war that had apparently broken out between Gryffindor and Slytherin. The exchange of attacks had started when the third-year Slytherins had all appeared one morning with their hair Weasley-red and far too many freckles on their faces. Every other House had laughed then, the Gryffindors loudest of all. The Slytherins had taken their revenge during dinnertime that same day, when all the cups, dishes and cutlery on the Gryffindor table had animated and attacked the Lions with extreme prejudice. Not only had they pelted them with food and drink but everyone except Potter, Longbottom and Weasley had had their noses and ears bit by rampaging teapots. The Weasley Twins had had so many clinging to them in the end that it was hard to tell where the teapots ended and the Weasleys begun.

The following morning, the first Slytherin to open their common room door had found the dungeon corridor outside flooded up to his midriff, courtesy of several hundred Aguamenti spells cast in the early hours of the morning by parties unknown. Naturally, said Slytherin had been washed away as all the water had poured through the open door and into the Slytherin common room and dormitories. It might have ended up as only a few inches of water after it spread out but the entire Slytherin House had to spend over an hour practicing Vanishing and Drying spells on everything the flood had reached.

Retaliation came in the form of a few handfulls of mud thrown through the Gryffindor tower windows from the outside. That was rather surprising as the Headmaster himself had cast enchantments that prevented unauthorized brooms from flying up to the castle. The even nastier surprise was that someone had cast the Geminio Charm on said handfuls of mud strongly enough that they multiplied till every level of the tower had become a swamp. The initial sources of the charm lost in all the duplicated mud and the separate clumps of mud mixing together, nobody could dispel it. It was a hard fight trying to vanish and scourgify it all as it multiplied, even with the help of Professor McGonagal.

Turnabout is fair play as they said, and the Gryffindors had gotten their hands on some muggle fireworks and stinkbombs. They set up shop in an abandoned classroom they hid behind secrecy charms and cast the Geminio Charm on the nonmagical pranking materials... then placed as powerful an Offensive Animation Jinx on the room as they could, keyed to Slytherins of course. Until the room could be found and the source of the attacks dispelled, flying muggle fireworks and stinkbombs traveled all around the castle, divebombing any Slytherin they could reach.

The next day, the Slytherins used Sticking Charms on the Grand Staircase to lock the moving flights of stairs in positions that deprived access to Gryffindor tower. Finding they'd been temporarily isolated from the rest of the castle, the Gryffindors had somehow managed to reach the dungeons anyway and stick the supposedly hidden entrance to the Slytherin common room shut. Both Houses lost two hundred points each when the majority of their members missed the first few hours of classes that day.

To everyone's relief, not only would most people would return home for Yule the next day but the Headmaster had finally involved himself. However amusing this little pranking contest might be, he said, he could not allow it to continue when it so greatly disrupted the entire school's activities. Any student caught carrying out such large-scale pranks would lose all privileges for the year, he warned them, and he would personally ensure that they would be caught.

Thus the Pank War ended and most of Hogwarts rejoiced.


	63. Gifts and Gains

**This chapter should have been uploaded yesterday at the latest, but I failed to notice my document manager had filled up again and panicked when it didn't seem to save once I wrote it. A few less than calm clicks later, and 3000+ words were gone. Morale of the story; always have a backup and don't type in the browser. Sorry everyone.**

 **Disclaimer: Did Sirius Black manage to get into Hogwarts multiple times despite Albus Dumbledore's efforts, something Voldemort himself never dared attempt? If yes, Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling, and this story is entirely nonprofit. Obviously, I'm not JK Rowling; you can tell from my account balance being mostly negative.**

 **...**

"Is that more prank material?" Tracey asked while the three of them were sitting in Daphne's bed and working on their separate projects.

"Gifts for Yule." Valeria answered, mentally aligning the last charm on the robe she'd been enchanting. She'd come a long way since her first failed attempts and the clothing she intended as gifts for Harry, Ron, and Neville were the proof. Arithmancy was not directly used in enchanting but it could predict the most efficient and stable spell combinations one could use. "Since Harry received that Firebolt a couple of weeks ago I decided to send everyone something useful."

"Who would send him such an awfully expensive broomstick and not sign the gift?" Daphne said, pausing her work on her Muggle Studies essay to frown at nobody in particular. "I mean, it wasn't even Yule."

"It was after our little adventure in Hogsmeade, though." Tracey worked the mystery over with a thoughtful expression. "Maybe the entire Auror office pitched in to replace Harry's broomstick after we saved their hides."

"Where's my gift, then?" Daphne asked, unconvinced.

"Devoured by the many-legged, multi-headed beast who haunts the dimwits of the wizarding world and is known as the Boy-Who-Lived." Tracey answered deadpan.

"Maybe a Death Eater sent it." Valeria said absent-mindedly as she put the final touches on yet another enchantment. "It's probably cursed to send Harry crushing down if he ever rides it on a real match." Eyeing her work critically, she smiled with satisfaction. Now all that was left was to let them soak in a spell-resistant medium for a week, then dry them. That would have to wait for another day however - Dobby was still not back from purchasing the live murtlap and she'd yet to send him to the Chamber of Secrets.

"What?" she asked when she finally realized the other two girls had stayed silent for far too long.

"Val, don't take this wrong..." Tracey hesitantly spoke "...but you're the most pessimistic person we've ever met."

"And we grew up in old Pureblood families." Daphne added. "Honestly, a Death Eater sent it? What kind of mental leap is that? How would they even pay for it?"

"I doubt the Goblins love the Ministry enough to call for the Aurors if a criminal shows up in Gringotts." Valeria told her disbelieving friends. "Especially if said Death Eater gets them a huge bribe from his vault that they wouldn't otherwise be allowed access to. Besides, according to the Twins Sirius Black was in Hogwarts about the same time we were in Hogsmeade that day. If a Death Eater can enter Hogwarts like that, enering Gringotts unnoticed would be a piece of cake." She had her doubts about most things those two miscreants told her, but not about something that important. On the other hand, she really wanted to know how they knew; they'd not even been in the castle back then. This definitely needed more research.

"Well, that makes sense." Daphne finally admitted. "Everything but that bit about the Twins anyway. Why are we allowing Harry to ride that broom again?"

"Because I checked the broom myself - and I taught Harry how to survive a two-hundred-foot fall unharmed." The shorter blonde answered with little concern.

"One of these days, Val," Daphne said and shook her pretty head "your ego will get you in serious trouble. Let's hope it doesn't get the rest of us, too."

 **...**

Owen Campbell was rather worried about his daughter's latest request. Supposedly, she needed that specific device for a school project; that would have been the most preposterous statement he'd ever read if not for his son Claude asking for custom-made plate armor for his and his devil-worshipping friends' role-playing sessions. Of course, those with a real witch in the family should not throw stones.

On the other hand, his daughter had already faced things that would send the average terrorist warlord run screaming in terror. Owen had had nightmares for weeks after she'd given him her first-year books to read. Brewing mind-altering substances that doubled as poisons or explosives if you got the recipe wrong? Using magic to produce the equivalent of flamethrowers, invisible blades that could sever limbs or decapitate you, unseen forces that could lift and throw objects weighing hundreds of pounds or fling someone out a window? If those nutters taught such things to eleven-year-olds, maybe Valeria's request was actually tame. She was now thirteen, after all.

The Campbell family patriarch eyed the purse his daughter had sent him via owl post critically. It would fit many hundred pounds according to her letter, and anything inside would be undetectable from the outside - even through magic. She'd supposedly borrowed it from a classmate... had fashion changed so much since his own teen years that girls run around with smuggling compartments at their hips nowadays? The much smaller version she'd gifted him with over a year ago had already proven its worth so he did not doubt this one would as well. Valeria's "school project" would definitely fit inside. The only question was, should he send it over?

Making up his mind, he reached for the notebook he always kept on his person. "Merry Christmas, my girl." He whispered, as he looked up the right contact for the job.

 **...**

"That's a really bad idea." Harry said as he, Ron, and Neville were discussing Christmas gifts.

"Come on, mate! Girls really dig flowery things." Ron said as his queen took out another one of Neville's pawns. "They'll totally love you if you send them something like that."

"Love to dismember you, more like." Neville added, sotto voce. "Three Slytherins and Ron's sister? You'll be so dead."

"What about Ginny?" The redhead asked aggressively. "Oi, that's my little sister you're talking about!"

"Who got detention for hexing the Ravenclaw seeker." Harry said with a small smile. "The fourth-year Ravenclaw seeker."

"Somebody's got a crush." The blond stage-whispered with a smirk. "Question is, is it on Ginny... or Chang?" Neville had improved by leaps and bounds from the timid, fearful boy he'd been back in first year. Even his being repeatedly slaughtered by Ron in Wizard's Chess did not hurt his self-esteem that much. He was now average in Potions so Snape did not shout at him as much, and his wandwork had improved tremendously after all their dueling practice. He'd even insisted on more practice over Ron's and Harry's protests with such determination that the other two boys had given in. Why he was so intent on getting better in a fight they didn't know - maybe it had something to do with the Death Eaters?

"Shut up! There is no crush!" Harry protested loudly. "It's just... they're our friends, right?"

"Someone has your back against the Dark Forces, mate, they're more than your friend." Ron said knowingly. "Check mate, by the way." He said to Neville and the other boy's animated chess set groaned at yet another defeat.

"I wonder if one of them sent you the Firebolt..." Neville mused.

"Oh, not this again!" Ron groaned and punched him lightly in the shoulder. "I get it, they're rich. But they hate Quidditch - and they're snakes. No way they'd send you a Firebolt to beat their own team with." The other two boys looked at each other and rolled their eyes in unison at that. Obviously, Ron didn't see the rather large logic problem with that statement... and he probably never would.

"Should I send them a book or something?" Harry asked, trying to change the subject.

"As if we could think of a book they haven't read or couldn't find in the library." Ron scoffed, schooting the idea down. "We need something unusual and impressive. Useful, too - Slytherins would like that." The red-headed boy spoke faster and with more confidence now, bringing his tactical mind to bear on the problem. "Probably not too girly or Daphne will give us pig's tails like your cousin's, Harry."

"We could get them something custom-made." Neville said, thinking hard as well. He didn't try to glance at Ron while making that suggestion. Tact was one of the first things his Gran had drilled into him from an early age, along with all the privileges and duties of an Ancient House. And with the likes of _that bitch_ on the loose, something practical was in order. Besides, Neville had never had someone to spend his allowance on before in his life. He could afford something a little bit extravagant without the other two boys knowing about it. "Jewelry, maybe? There's lots of useful magic that can be put on them."

"Yeah." Harry agreed, happy to finally get an answer to this very difficult dillemma. "We could get Dobby to make the order, too. Faster than the owl post and the little guy would enjoy the exercise."

Having tentatively agreed on a course of action and avoided the mortal peril of having several girls annoyed at them, the three Gryffindors started working on the specifics...

 **...**

Bellatrix had always been the Dark Lord's most loyal and most powerful servant, all the Death Eaters knew even if they did not admit it. She was also one of the most unstable, however. Still sulking several weeks after her plan largely failed and going on random raids on muggle houses to blow off steam was proof enough of that, Selwyn mused. She couldn't see that the fear they'd spread and the major blow they'd given the DMLE would be huge advantages in the months to come; she only cared that they'd failed to kill Potter, Longbottom, or Dumbledore. Of course they'd failed in that! They couldn't hope to succeed where the Dark Lord himself failed - not unless they got really lucky. And if they had succeeded? Selwyn was less than certain that the Dark Lord would reward them for it when he made his return.

Since then, the nine of them had made plan after plan to undermine Dumbledore and the Ministry, set them against each other, all of them more the ramblings of madmen than coherent plots. That was to be expected, naturally; the Lestrange brothers had come up with most of the ideas. It was only when Dolohov had made the rather stupid suggestion of literally undermining the Ministry by making it collapse and burying everyone inside that Bella had come out of her mopping long enough to make some clever suggestions. Those suggestions Selwyn can hammered into a new plot, one that could potentially get them... everything.

The Dark Lord's cleverest servant hummed a catchy Christmas tune as he cast more Vanishing and Hardening spells. If things worked as he expected, he and his family would take the Malfoys' place as the Dark Lord's right hands soon enough. Maybe he'd even claim Malfoy's greatest treasure in the process. It wasn't as if Narcissa really loved her husband after all; she was too much of a Black for that. And he would have her sister's support too, if they succeeded.

With those happy thoughts, the real leader of the escaped Death Eaters redoubled his efforts to finish his little "gift" in time. Too bad that Dumbledore wouldn't get to open it until well after the holidays.

 **...**

 _To mister Harry Potter,_

 _Eight bed, third floor, Gryffindor tower, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

 _Mister Potter, during our research into the history and methods of the ten escaped Death Eaters, we've stumbled upon certain information that might interest you. As you might have heard, the two most dangerous of the escapees and probable leaders are Sirius Black and Bellatrix Lestrange nee Black. The two of them are cousins, and equal in their depravity and malice. While many people know that the Lestrange woman is responsible for many grisly murders of wizards, witches, children, and muggles, far fewer people know how and why she was finally apprehended and sent to prison. Since you are good friends with Mister Longbottom, you should know that Bellatrix was the leader of the Death Eater group that attacked and tortured into insanity Aurors Frank and Alice Longbottom, Mister Longbottom's parents. To this day, the two of them remain in St Mungo's with permanent Cruciatus damage. Such an attack, performed after You-Know-Who's fall from power and the war's end, was as senseless as it was horrendous._

 _Sirius Black was involved in a similar event. Our research uncovered that Black was - incredible as that might seem - a good friend of your parents during their years in Hogwarts. From the stories we've heard they were practically inseparable, Sirius Black and James Potter. Unfortunately, your parents' faithful friend proved false. After discovering they'd become a target for You-Know-Who himself, your parents went into hiding behind a powerful spell called the 'Fidelius'. Said spell conceals a secret in such a way that it cannot be revealed in any way, unless the sole person you trusted it to willingly reveals it. Your parents chose their single most trusted friend for a secret keeper; Sirius Black. Unfortunately, their trust was misplaced because Black was secretly You-Know-Who's spy. He betrayed them, and they died horribly as we all know._

 _This might be a depressing Christmas gift Mister Potter, but I cannot bear to see the scion of such great people as Lily and James Potter remain unaware of the true circumstances at the war's end, the true culprits responsible for his and his friends' dismal lives. The Ministry and the Hogwarts faculty have always been known for their belief in secrecy and their control of information for their own gain, and it is time that practice came to an end._

 _Yours sincerely,_

 _a friend._

The letter was carefully folded, then charmed to make the short trip on its own and wiped of all evidence linking it to whoever wrote it. Even the wording was carefully neutral - or as neutral as it could be and still do its job. The sender smirked. With any luck, Potter's self-righteousness and tendency to meddle coupled with the letter's contents would net him an appropriate Christmas gift for a change.

 **...**

Remus Lupin stared at the piece of parchment in his hands for a hundredth time. He liked to believe he was good at puzzles, but he could make neither head nor tails of this one.

 _To mister Remus Lupin,_

 _Defense Professor's quarters,_ _Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

 _Mister Lupin, we are writing to inform you that we are less than pleased at the quality of your work in light of recent events. Hogwarts' security has been repeatedly breached, Death Eaters have targeted children, and your efforts to teach young witches and wizards to defend themselves are still sorely lacking. We understand that the watering down of the curricullum is the Ministry's primary way of basically handing out OWLs to the less than capable scions of certain failing families, but we still hold you partially responsible for this oversight. You are capable enough to have noticed the problem which, coupled with the atrocious quality of instructors over the past thirty years, is to blame for the newest generation being helpless before any threat._

 _Several hundred older students and Hogsmeade residents should not have so easily been overrun by roughly equal numbers of Inferi. Even a third year should have been capable of either handling an animated corpse with Severing Charms or retreating in a controlled manner, were he experienced enough not to panic in the face of danger and knew how to use his spells correctly. It is your duty to give students such experience and as far as we can tell, you've been sleeping on the job._

 _If the standard curricullum won't do, reinstate the Dueling Club. Teach them some more advanced and useful spells. Instill in them the ideas of being always prepared and aware of their surroundings. Hiding behind the failures of your predecessors, the Ministry, and Albus Dumbledore is entirely unacceptable. We enclose a list of spells and tactics we believe the student body should be drilled in, one for beginners and one for more advanced duelists. If a fraud like Lockhart was capable of teaching at least some of them Disillusionment and Confundus Charms, we don't see why you should limit yourself to only the most basic approved spells._

 _In other news, our recent research in Astronomy has provided a potential solution to your unfortunate condition. It is likely to prove far cheaper than the potion alternative in the long run, and significantly more effective, while also being something you can handle personally without need for outside assistance. This announcement at least might make a suitable Yule present, don't you agree? Provided that your new and improved teaching methods prove satisfactory, we will hand over all relevant research to you by the end of the year to do with as you wish._

 _Yours sincerely,_

 _a concerned individual._

Remus Lupin quashed brutally any irrational hope the letter gave him. It probably was no more than a covert blackmail attempt - and an effective one at that. Was Severus the culprit? He'd have liked to believe the two of them had been making steady improvements in their relationship after their talks - Severus no longer seemed to hate him personally in any event. Could he be blackmailing him in this way?

He looked at the lists again. Nothing more advanced than a Protego for the beginner's group, though pointing out some of the... uglier uses of basic charms was not to his liking. The advanced group however... he didn't know if he should teach anything worse than the Reductor Curse to students - certainly not the Confringo Curse and the Tunneling Charm. Both could do tremendous damage, as Black had proved by killing Peter and twelve muggles with the former.

He didn't know waht to do...


	64. Rats

**.Executioner: obviously the friend is not Harry's friend. Not that Harry has any idea about the lack of trial at that point.**

 **Urazz: Perceptive as always. Though it's less a matter of Harry's competence as it was him giving the Firebolt a test flight before Valeria or the others had a chance to talk about their suspicions. He's in Gryffindor and they're in Slytherin after all.**

 **a1993: I got less sympathy for Lupin than many. He could have tried _something_ to better his life.**

 **ro781727: I don't think Val wants to get Harry killed. And yeah, Selwyn is smoking something that he shouldn't.**

 **Tomon: Thanks. I've tried to make all six primary characters capable in a believable manner. Val is less book-smart but more ambitious than Hermione so she's willing to do more to exploit all opportunities to her advantage. Seriously, with all the extremely advanced magic the canon trio was exposed to, they should have a huge leg up over others in their year. Must have been Ron's and the Dursleys' influence that kept Harry back IMHO.**

 **...**

 _"I solemnly swear I am up to no good!"_

The Weasley twins were such accomplished pranksters and had such a deep sibling bond that they often did not need to talk during their many operations; they could seemingly exchange ideas and thoughts with a wordless gesture or even a glance. And while ickle Ronniekins and maybe Percy could exceed them when tactics and plans were concerned, none of their siblings had anywhere near their ability to improvise or their drive to act. To try new ideas and upset the status quo, where others were content within the boundaries set by a parochial society. It was not just the Map that had made them the best pranksters of their generation, after all.

Their new plot was promising to be a great success. They'd been trying to find a way to make objects invisible since they'd nicked a copy of the Invisible book of Invisibility from Flourish and Blotts in their second year. They'd not had much luck for nearly three years as they couldn't even read the hidden tome, and good ol' Flitwick had only mentioned such charms in passing in their third year - once. Their lucky break had come with Lockhart. A fraud the man might have been when it came to Defense, he certainly knew his Mind Magic and Secrecy Charms - as well as how to charm the ladies, a skill both Twins saw as quite valuable. Instead of having to wait till their NEWT-level Charms class to see the spells they needed in action, Lockhart had been more than willing to give them a few pointers in exchange for... considerations. After a year of practice, they'd finally managed to make small objects entirely invisible. They'd yet to find out how to make the spell last longer than half an hour or so, how to apply it to anything that wouldn't fit in the palm of their hands, or how to extend it beyond the frame of the enchanted object itself but it was still very very useful.

That usefulness they were about to test after combining it with the second bit of magic they'd painstakingly gleaned from their not-so-fun-loving elders. Their mother was a frighteningly powerful witch when she wanted to be; with that many children and no house-elf to help her, she'd been using magic to cope with all the housework for so long that her skill with a wand might exceed even McGonagal's. She was no slouch in enchanting either, and the Twins had seen her many times spell anything from self-cleaning dishes to Howlers. That last observation they were putting to work now; they were attempting to make a Howler of their own. They'd disguise their voice with a voice-altering potion when making it, charm it invisible, and then send it to their victim in the same way Father's interdepartmental memos flew by themselves.

Not even a shred of proof to implicate them, highly embarrassing for their target without being dangerous, no need to do anything beyond making and then unleashing their Campbell-seeking mail. It was going to be great; they could feel it. And when this proof of concept worked, they could start sending Invisi-Howlers on other deserving recipients such as Snape, Malfoy, or ickle Ronniekins. With a satisfied smirk, they finished their latest round of enchanting, checked the Map to confirm no teacher or Prefect was patrolling outside the room they'd appropriated for their experiments, wiped it clear, and left. Neither twin noticed the near-invisible, weightless rat inferius hanging upside-down from the ceiling, a pair of shrunken omnioculars attached to its head...

 **...**

Another superiority of Omnioculars over standard recording spells was that they copied the functions of muggle video recorders. Valeria strongly suspected a muggleborn enchanter like herself had carried the idea over from the muggle world and used magic to improve upon it. Now, the zoom, playback, slow-motion, and fast-forward features of the device were proving a huge boon in her attempts to spy on and avoid the pranking attempts of the Weasley Twins. She had far too much to do to get mandatory infirmary stays as a result of their more dangerous attempts on her dignity.

Finding a solution for Ron's pink rat was one of them. She had admitted - if only to herself - that Scabbers' atrocious coloration was entirely her fault. Recalling all she could of that incident on the Hogwarts Express two and a half years ago, she was beginning to suspect Ron's version of the events was partially correct; Scabbers was indeed cursed. The stronger curses depended more on combining a powerful intent with destructive emotion rather than wand movement and incantations; that was exactly how one turned a normal _Incendio_ into cursed fire. It was almost certain that trying to force that Color-Changing Charm on Scabbers while being angry at Ron had produced a curse - the exhaustion that followed dovetailed nicely with using magic beyond her level. The problem was, sufficiently powerful curses could only be ended with specific counterspells or with an even more powerful general counterspell. As a Color-Changing Curse had never existed before, she was unlikely to find a counterspell in a book. Reverse-engineering the initial effect and then inventing the counterspell from scratch was Scabbers' only chance of a pink-free life. And that was only the first problem she had to deal with; she'd yet to deal with Scabbers registering as a person under _Homenum Revelio_.

"Val, do you have a moment?" Neville asked, walking determinedly into the hidden room their unofficial group of six had appropriated for their various extracurricular activities. The room had come a long way since its days as an abandoned classroom. The door now looked like a wall courtesy of Daphne's Transfiguration skill and would only open to a password, the interior walls had been cleaned and repaired during their practice sessions of household magic Tracey insisted on, and all of them had rendered the walls impervious, unbreakable, shielded, and silenced so they could sharpen their dueling skills without risk of damaging the castle or drawing attention. That still did not mean any one of them could barge in openly and without concealment charms as her oldest Gryffindor friend had done; they'd yet to make the room Unplottable or add repelling and aversion charms on the entrance.

"What is it, Neville?" the Slytherin witch asked with some worry. Tracey and Daphne had noticed the admittedly alarming changes in Valeria's behavior and appearance and, as good friends would do, had intervened to save her from her abuse of the Time-Turner. She was not sure Harry and Ron had noticed similar changes in Neville however. The blond boy laughed less, interacted with any of them rarely, concentrated on his lessons and their study and practice sessions with undeniable intensity, and could be found practicing wand movements or whispering incantations under his breath every single hour of his free time. He had even let the quality of his written homework drop considerably, something Valeria had not done even during her first year when she had to deal with all the bullies and bigots a muggleborn sorted into Slytherin had attracted. Neville's skin was an unhealthy yellow and he had dark circles under his eyes, but the most worrying physical change was the dramatic loss of weight; he was either forgoing half his meals or burning a huge amount of calories exercising.

"Could you help me with my dueling?" the tall Gryffindor finally asked after a minute of hesitation.

"Why ask me for help?" Valeria asked curiously, already having an idea what the answer would be. "Daphne is the most accurate and agile of us all, and Harry is the fastest. I'm no faster than Ron and I have two left feet, to hear Daphne tell it."

"But you know more spells than any of us." Neville said earnestly. "I've seen you pull off fifth, maybe sixth year magic more than once."

"That is true." She agreed. Some of it was a talent with slow, big, flashy magic, some of it was the Time-Turner giving her extra time to learn and practice, but Neville was essentially correct. "What do you want me to teach you?"

"Something that hits hard." The boy's expression hardened now. "That mess in Hogsmeade with the inferi... none of us could do much to them."

"Neville, you're the best of us in aiming and focusing the Severing Charm - you've certainly used it often enough in Herbology." She noticed his angry scowl, his hands clenched into fists so tight that his fingers were white. "You could take someone's head off with that spell - what exactly are you asking of me?"

"You're my friend, right?" The boy asked. "A friend would do anything to help, right? Why not show me something... I dunno. Ron always claimed you knew some dark spells. Then again, he says that of all the Slytherins." The way he said that concerned Valeria. Where had the sweet, likable -if a bit timid- boy gone? The changes Neville's character had undergone...

"There are three things that make a certain piece of magic Dark, Neville." She finally said. "The first is backing your magic with harmful emotion; acting out of fear, enjoying causing harm, wanting control over others, putting hatred above morality, destroying without reason. The second is powering magic through sacrifice, from a drop of blood to offering human souls. The third is violating fundamental concepts such as death or time." Her little description had failed to garner a reaction so she spoke honestly. "Neville, even knowing that kind of magic can and will change you. Why would you want to learn it?"

The boy stared down at the floor for nearly three minutes, hands shaking as he argued with himself. Determination fought with the healthy dose of fear almost everyone had for harmful magic as well as common sense. Determination won.

"Revenge." He finally said darkly. "The Death Eaters that escaped... the Lestranges are among them." Neville's expression became ugly for a few seconds, a scowl full of anger, fear, hate. "They attacked my mom and dad right after the war ended. V-Voldemort had disappeared, presumed dead. Everyone was celebrating, the Death Eaters were being rounded up, everyone was a bit careless. That was when my family was attacked - a pointless, useless, unfair gesture by the last remnants of the losing side." Neville kicked the desk, hard. Scabbers screeched indignantly and jumped off the falling piece of furniture and into Valeria's lap.

"I see." She stroked the rat to calm him down and thought about it. Neville had a legitimate reason to want to hurt those people, if an unhealthy one. She recognized the signs; she was not sure that he'd stop at merely hurting them if given the opportunity. Taking a life, hatefully and with magic, was never a good thing but the other outcome was even worse. What if Neville risked his life trying to confront his parents' murderers? Valeria assumed it was murder - only something that bad would cause such a reaction. Then and there she decided to help Neville, not simply teach him as he had asked. Sometimes, throwing around destructive magic helped you blow off some steam, and gave you some perspective in what could happen if you used it in a real situation. Much like guns, most people had no idea what they were doing when they first used it and could cause a huge mess. Of course, even a moderately destructive spell was more like a rocket launcher than a handgun; she and Neville would have to be careful.

"OK Neville. We'll start with the Reductor Curse." She gave the boy a wry smile. "It's actually from a Ministry-approved book, and considered on par with fifth year magic. The book even warns students not to disintegrate their classroom's ceiling under pain of detention. I guess the writer never considered that one classroom's ceiling is another's floor and a sudden thirty-foot fall could seriously injure the dozens of people in said other classroom."

"Thank you!" Neville suddenly embraced her fiercely, too emotional to take her not so subtle warning to heart. At least he didn't kiss her; that would be awkward. "You're a great friend, Val."

Yes, because friends taught each other how to express their violent tendencies with a spell that could rend someone to bits. She really needed to have a talk with Harry and Ron about Neville sooner rather than later. Speaking of Ron, Neville's comments had given her an idea...

 **...**

Peter Pettigrew was having a great week. The Weasly boy's Slytherin friends were good girls - especially the short blonde. She might have accidentally turned him pink a few years ago, robbing him of the ability to stay unnoticed as a common garden rat, but she was willing to help him regain his capability to blend in. While doing that, she had also convinced the other five young witches and wizards of their little group to pay more attention to him, groom him and feed him regularly. She'd even said she'd had a breakthrough in her research and would change him back soon enough. And in the meantime Peter would live like a king, enjoying the tasty morsels they were feeding him, the rat tonic that made his fur all lustrous, and the girls' company.

The Weasleys had always been either inattentive or lazy masters, and only the boys played with him at all. They reminded him of the Marauders at that; how Sirius, James, and Remus had always involved him in their schemes but only peripherally, how they'd never truly cared about him, how they made him the butt of many jokes. How they got all the girls and timid, bumbling, little Peter never had a chance to get a girlfriend with them around. Their relationship with the Evans and McKinnon girls had only been the tip of a very large, very ugly iceberg.

And Sirius had the temerity to question why he had betrayed them? Of course Peter had thrown in his lot with the Dark Lord; nobody else had really valued his skills. But Peter had shown them in the end - he'd shown them all. Remus was believed a traitor and practically ostracized by all his friends. McKinnon had died horribly. Travers had even let him do it after he'd disarmed her; he'd gained his Dark Mark that day. James and Lily foolishly trusted him after showing him nothing but scorn and condescension and had paid for their stupidity. Sirius, the great prankster, had been outwitted and made to take the blame.

Now Peter was good friends with the Boy-Who-Lived, with a Weasley, with the Longbottom heir, and with three Slytherin girls, two of which were heiresses and the third was the smartest witch in her year. Yes, he was in the perfect position, making the right friends to continue his work. And there were always the benefits of new friendships. Snuggling in the Greengrass girl's lap, Peter thought how good his life now was...

 **...**

"Why did you bring us all here?" Ron asked. "Christmas break is over and the first week of classes will be brutal."

"I warned you about leaving all your homework for the last moment, Weasley." Daphne said smugly. "Especially those runic translations."

"Shut up, Greengrass! I did those translations two weeks ago!" First time for everything, Valeria thought and rolled her eyes. "It's not my fault someone convinced Harry and I to take a third elective!"

"Some of us have more than three electives, you know." Valeria said dryly.

"Well, some of you are overachieving know-it-alls." The redhead shot back. Tracey slapped him in the back of the head for his troubles.

"This is a war council, Ronald." The muggleborn Slytherin said, putting emphasis on his name. Annoying the heedless Gryffindor was fun at times. "Bring forth the rat."

"Finally!" The boy said, depositing the pink monstrosity on the table they'd been sitting around. "Tell me you're about to change him back."

"I am about to change him back." She replied, eliciting more eye rolls and some cheering. "Have you all been giving him his tonic?"

"Well, duh." Tracey said. "You've only been hounding us to keep to the right dosage many times a day for the past week."

"Excellent." Valeria smirked, drawing her wand. "Wands out. If I'm right, this should prove interesting."

"Whatever." Somehow, she got the message the others did not appreciate her hard work. Then again, it was nearly two in the morning and they had Potions first thing tomorrow.

"OK, Scabbers. You're our good friend, right?" She asked the rat, the others all giving her strange looks. However many simpler tests she'd tried, this was the moment of truth. Morgana, this was going to be awkward if she was wrong. "Could you please change back for us?"

For a few moments, nothing happened and Valeria thought she'd spiked Scabbers' tonic with Gregory's Unctuous Unction for nothing. Then the plump, pink rat shifted and grew in size, in an instant changing to a plump, short, rat-faced, middle-aged man with unkempt hair, too long, dirty nails, beady eyes, a many-patched, threadbare robe, and very pink skin.

Hilarity ensued.


	65. Mark and Reprisal

**Whoa, too many reviews to answer individually. Let's give some general answers. Unctuous Unction is Val's go-to potion because it's useful. Less creepy than a love potion, less invasive than the Imperius. Someone is unlikely to oppose your suggestions when they believe they want to follow them after all. On the other hand, it takes ages to brew and is harder to use than a simple incantation so unless you got lots of free time, it's not a practical long-time control method. 'The Prince' is not one of my fics - I've only written two. There are a lot more than three players in this developing Charlie Foxtrot. Valeria plans to give Peter to the authorities - eventually. I'm trying to develop every character in the story as a real character without changing their base nature from canon - it's hard, especially when it comes to people like Malfoy. He's not supposed to be a joke - he's just supposed to have a different field of expertise than Harry or Valeria.**

 **Many thanks to White Squirrel for all his many reviews. Some of your guesses were spot-on and your suggestions greatly appreciated.**

 **...**

Peter Pettigrew felt very uncomfortable. Not because he'd taken his human form for the first time after a decade, no. Nor because he'd been revealed before Harry Potter, the boy whose parents he'd betrayed and led to their deaths. It wasn't as if he'd ever felt remorse about said deaths, after all. James the bigheaded pureblood prodigy and Lily the brilliant and fiesty muggleborn could never have been true friends of poor, clumsy, hopeless Peter. They had either kept him around as a joke, or because they pitied him.

No, Peter felt uncomfortable because his sudden appearrance had upset his new, real friends. Ron's near-apoplexy was understandable; the boy had often slept next to Peter in his bed. Peter almost giggled thinking about it but at the last moment realized it would be poor form. Neither he nor the boy were poofters as far as he could tell, but animals had a far less developed sense of social taboos - Sirius had often proven that by licking himself, the bloody idiot. Harry's confusion and shock was equally expected, but the girls' disgust was not. The mousy brunette had a way with animals and was friendlier than even Ron so why was she looking at him like that now? The Greengrass girl was colder and more reserved, but she had a heart of gold, she did. The coldly measuring gaze she had fixed him with though? It upset him even further for Peter knew he was at fault; he'd befriended all those people under false pretenses - just like Sirius and James had done to him.

His new friends had been shouting at each other for a good ten minutes and Peter felt more and more responsible for the brewing fight when the short blonde had asked him to turn back into a rat and retreat to the basket the mousy brunette had enchanted for comfort just for him. Peter was glad to have an excuse to escape the anger and shouts, if a bit guilty at how nice and warm the softened and temperature-controlled sheets inside his basket were. He sat there and nibbled upon a sausage that had been marinated with rat tonic, thinking how he could make it up to the good friends he'd so disturbed...

 **...**

"Give me the damn basket, Campbell!" Ron growled, hands reaching out even as Neville and Harry held him back. "I need something to practice my Fire-Making Charm on!"

"Right, because being sent to Azkaban for murder is the best way to start your day!" Valeria shouted back and Harry winced at how loud a girl shorter and smaller than him could be when she wanted to. At least the room's walls were silenced.

"I don't bloody care about bloody Azkaban!" Ron roared, very red in the face now. "They'll never find that creep to take a statement from if we cook him and feed him to miss Norris, anyway!" Harry was with Ron on that one, even though he held his anger in check. If he cut loose that very moment, he had no idea if he could stop without being forcibly restrained. The damn rat had shared with them his name before their very reasonable outrage could overcome their shock and even after one world-shaking revelation, Harry could still put two and two together. He'd been reading the library's Daily Prophet archives ever since he'd received that letter during the holidays and he'd learned how Sirius Black was sent to Azkaban for killing Peter Pettigrew. But Pettigrew had suddenly turned up alive before them. If the Daily Prophet - if the Ministy and the courts - could be so wrong, what else didn't they know about the war? Harry wanted to get Pettigrew in his hands not to slowly cook him as Ron did, but to ask him a few questions - or a few hundred.

"Ron, you can't kill a man just because he's a... well... pervert." Neville said reasonably even as he struggled to restrain the other boy. "Though he is an illegal Animagus..." he continued with a frown. "Professor McGonagal mentioned animagi in class, and I don't remember him being on the list of registered practitioners. The list is only a few names long, even my memory isn't that bad."

"Your memory is fine, Neville." Valeria said with a frown. "Checking that list is one of the first things I did - there is no known rat animagus at all! It was one of the reasons it took me that long to check whether 'Scabbers' was one." She scowled at the basket she'd put the pink rat in. "And while we can't murder him, there are quite a few answers I'd like to get out of our little rodent." Harry perked up at that. If Valeria agreed with him on that, there was no way the others would disagree in the end. All it would take would be a bit of convincing.

"We need to turn him in." Tracey suggested. "He's a criminal and possibly a fugitive. Isn't he supposed to be dead, or something?"

"Oh, it's far worse than that." Daphne said darkly, finally breaking her silence. "None of you noticed that... interesting scar on his arm?"

"His..." Neville inhaled sharply, his face turning pale as he shot the basket a fearful stare. "His left arm?" He finished in a near-whisper despite the silencing charms on both the basket and the walls, staring at the Greengrass heiress with a look that was almost pleading her not to answer.

"Indeed. Curious little thing it was, red lines like a recent burn - but not quite." Daphne smirked coldly. "I couldn't see the upper part but the lower looked suspiciously like a snake."

"Oh Merlin!" Neville paled even further, to Harry's and Valeria's confusion. "What are we going to do?"

"About what, Neville?" Harry finally asked, wanting to know what could upset his friend that badly.

"Harry... he's a Death Eater! A marked one!" Harry was confused even more. How could Neville tell? And why were Ron and Tracey paling too, now?

"Please explain to the rest of the class how you came to that conclusion." Valeria gave voice to Harry's questions as well. "What do you mean by 'marked one'?"

"The Dark Lord's most devoted followers were magically branded by the Dark Lord himself." Daphne explained, smiling at Valeria's reaction to her instructor's tone. Harry doubted the platinum-haired girl had a chance to use that often with a fanatical bookworm of Valeria's caliber around, so she was going to milk it for all it was worth despite the seriousness of the situation. "The mark was shaped like a skull with a snake coming out of its mouth, the same symbol the Death Eaters and the Dark Lord used to mark the skies over the scenes of their murders as a challenge to a Ministry impotent to stop them and as a source of fear to the average witch or wizard." She frowned at the basket again. "The Dark Mark cannot be removed, as far as I know. Many Death Eaters would have removed it after the Dark Lord's fall to avoid prosecution if they could. Since they had to use the Imperius defense, claiming to have been magically compelled into service, it is safe to assume that it's irreversible."

"They were lying." Valeria interrupted. "Irreversible magic like Unbreakable Vows, becoming a Secret-Keeper, and similar enchantments have to be accepted willingly. If this Dark Mark is the same kind of magic then it couldn't be forced on them... though they could have been coerced or tricked into accepting, I guess."

"Forget about the magic!" Ron shouted once more. "We have a Death Eater in our hands - one everyone else thinks is dead! Let's go tell a Professor!"

"That would be... unwise." Daphne said, putting a stop to Ron's plan of getting an Order of Merlin. "Mother's last letter said Fudge is on a witch hunt to cover his administration's deficiencies. He's trying to blame everything on Dumbledore and Madam Bones, like he did last time. If a few students getting hurt was enough for the Death Eaters with political influence to try to remove Dumbledore from Hogwarts last year, a Death Eater living in the castle for years and being captured by students rather than Professors would be bad for us."

"How?" Harry asked the Slytherin witch. Not that he didn't believe all that about Fudge, but being against handing over a Death Eater was suspicious in his book.

"If Dumbledore is removed from Hogwarts, even temporarily, it will be in the Daily Prophet before you can say 'Ministry-controlled press'." The tall girl shot him a rather disappointed look that managed to make him doubt his own intelligence while still not giving him an excuse to complain. How did girls do that?! "I for one would not want to be in the castle when nearly a dozen of the Dark Lord's worst followers read that the castle is undefended in their morning paper. How about you? You Gryffindors are all about pushing your luck, after all."

"OK, ok, we get it!" Ron spoke up. "No handling over the creepy ratman to the Ministry right now. What will we do with him though?"

"I have some ideas about that." Valeria said and everyone else groaned. Harry could still remember their little encounter with the Dementors when one of her plans had backfired.

"Don't be like that!" the girl pouted, convincing no-one. "As long as we feed him his new and improved tonic, Peter the rat-man will become more and more our friend. That gives us time to set him up to be captured by Dumbledore or the teachers, preferably outside the castle so the Ministry can't say anything about it. We could even have him captured by Hagrid, so our biggest friend could get the credit." Despite some reservations, nobody could argue with that plan. Except...

"What are we going to do with him until then?" Neville asked, eyeing the basket with an expression between disgust and fury. In that moment, Harry saw just how far his friend had come from the timid boy he'd once been.

"We could ask him... ask him about the war!" Harry suggested as if it had just occured to him. He really wanted to get those answers about his parents and if he had to interrogate a potion-controlled Death Eater... well, the rat should be thankful they weren't doing something far worse to him.

"Not just about the war." Valeria said with a strange gleam in her eyes. "Pettigrew is a full adult that fought in the war - under the Dark Wanker's command no less. He is also an animagus, and has been for at least a decade. I think our new best friend has many more things to tell us than just about the war."

 **...**

Selwyn studied the stone ceiling over his head critically. They'd been working on it for weeks but finally they were ready. The hardest part had been to conceal their plans and their execution from that muggle-loving old fool, while still setting up the trap he could not get out of... and they'd succeeded. Now only two things were left; setting the plan into motion, and finding appropriate support in the more legal side of the equation.

To that end, after months on the run, Selwyn had finally contacted his old House. His parents, uncles, siblings, and cousins shared his beliefs about what wizarding Britain really needed to have a better, more glorious future. His father was willing to go even further than Selwyn himself to achieve that dream, though his cowardice and lack of dueling skill had stopped him from entering the Dark Lord's inner circle outright. And there was one member of their House whose fanaticism went further than their by far, however well hidden it might be. They would help him implement the plan from their side of things.

And not a moment too soon. Bellatrix's mood had changed again and not even the Dark Lord could predict what that woman would do if not depressed after a big failure, or slavishly devoted to a master that could direct her actions. Unfortunately, the others were willing to follow the bitch more than him. If Selwyn did not act soon, Bellatrix's mad schemes might see them dead or captured before his plans could come to fruition.

 **...**

"You're right." Severus Snape said through gritted teeth. He did not like admitting to his mistakes, his failures. He liked it even less when somebody else manipulated his actions and thoughts. Which made this one admission quite hard to make, irrespective of whom he admitted things to. "There is a curse on the Defense post. The Dark Lord hid it using similar magic to a cursed barrier he invented during the war, but it's there - I've confirmed it with more than guesses by its effects."

"Excellent!" Lupin said, sipping from his cup of Wolfbane Potion. "You know, Severus, I've always believe you were the best of our year when it came to Defense. In fact..." Severus' murderous glare shut the idiot up before you could say 'full moon'. Working with Lupin for the good of the castle and towards the fulfillment of his oaths was one thing. Suffering through his less-than-thoughtfull prattling and inane commentary was quite another.

"If you've sealed the tunnels you and your merry band of miscreants discovered," he growled "then let's think up of any other unorthodox approaches to the castle - and how to defend agains them. I don't know about you Lupin, but I can't sleep in caves or under trees. This castle is my home and seeing it torn down by a scheme cooked up by Lestrange's and Black's madness is something I can ill afford." They continued their work in silence.

 **...**

Peter was munching on another sausage and researching the warmest and more comfortable sleep positions in his new basket when the Campbell girl called him out. Eagerness to help his new friend briefly warred with habitual laziness, and won. Peter got out and, at the girl's request, turned into his human form.

"Peter, can I see your left arm?" the small blonde asked and suddenly fear and suspicion warred with eagerness far more than laziness had.

"Why?" he asked, playing for time until his inner conflict was resolved. His left arm was precisely why he'd been hiding for over a decade now and he wasn't certain he trusted his new friends enough to show it to them like that.

"Don't worry about it." The girl said with obvious concern as she saw his expression. "If it's so personal, I'll leave it alone." She handed him over a large bag that smelled wonderful. "Here, homemade cakes from Mrs Weasley. She sent Ron a batch but the boy wasn't hungry. Too upset to eat much." She said conspiratorially and the two of them giggled. For a split second Peter thought that wasn't funny at all, but reconsidered. Of course it was funny; everything his new friends said was funny, wasn't it? He ate the admittedly delicious cakes, his mood improving with every bite he took. Seeing the slightly regretful look the blonde girl was sending him, he smiled at her and extended his left arm. "Here. I don't know why you want to see it but if it's making you so concerned, I'll show it to you."

"You really would?" She smiled once more. "Excellent!" She lifted his sleeve and examined the angry red lines forming a skull and a snake, the remains of his dark mark. All of the Dark Lord's servants had seen their Marks fade into simple scars upon his fall but in recent years the mark had made a comeback. Even as a rat Peter could feel it like a wound that would never really close, echoes of the heat and pain of the Dark Lord's call occasionally reappearring. He'd felt a sharp spike of pain two years ago and since then the Mark had been less faded, but not full. Why, he had no idea.

"What are you looking for?" He asked the young witch now prodding his Mark with her wand.

"Oh nothing much." Valeria said with a smirk. "I just want to see how it works."


	66. Nor Have I Yet Outrun The Sun

**Guest: Yeah, it would. Ron's impulsive, but he would be devastated if he realized he'd just killed someone after the fact. Luckily, he has some good friends that care, at least one of which has physical proof of the damage killing can do to a soul.**

 **Urazz: Neville and Ron still believe that was Serius Black, and Harry is only beginning to have doubts. Harry is still not completely open with his friends so he didn't tell them about the letter.**

 **a1993/HappyDeathExecutioner: Not exactly what she has in mind. It wouldn't be the greatest benefit, after all.**

 **He-SpecOps: LOL, I'm nowhere near a true master of evil plots; I couldn't even follow the plot of 'Lost'. Then again, Macciavelli himself wouldn't have; the writers for that one kinda admitted they just did random stuff precisely so nobody could predict it. Now that was real evil.**

 **Serpentine13: Yeah, brainwashing is nasty. False friendship is still less icky than love potions though.**

 **ProditorMagnus: Don't coult your pairings yet.**

 **Tomon: If she wanted just to study him, she'd have kept her discovery secret. On the other hand, mistrust of authority can push her into convincing them not to go to the teachers on its own, and she has that in spades.**

 **White Squirrel: Again, thanks for the good reviews. Time-travel can be complicated, but the limitations of both the Time-Turner and the contract simplify things a bit. Until Val begins tempting Paradox-eggeddon, that is. (Thanks to Jim Butcher, that is a word.) As for Lupin's cure, I had that be Valeria's first thought. Implementation however would be problematic; no magical government would ever allow werewolves to portkey, especially foreign ones. And someone might _accidentally_ give Lupin a portkey sending him to the depths of the Laurentian Abyss, or something.  
**

 **Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and Harry Potter does not belong to me. If it did, I'd have bought a bigger house... that would be curiously yacht-shaped.**

 **...**

The return of the Dueling Club came as no surprise to a select few among the student population - namely Harry and his friends. Professor Lupin had finally found a Boggart over the holidays and had begun teaching Harry the Patronus Charm. Over the course of their first lesson, the Defense Professor had admitted to remaking the club Lockhart had started last year. He'd even promised to prevent any disastrous Harry-related events from occuring, the poor man.

Of course, two people within the castle had known of the club long before that - or claimed to have. Sybil Trelawney had annoyed Valeria during the last Divination lesson before the club's first meeting enough that the Slytherin witch had indirectly and oh so innocently challenged her in having the class focus their predictions on uncovering the Dueling Club's details. Trelawney had enthusiastically predicted gruesome battle wounds during a battle with the forces of darkness for Harry and his friends. Valeria had predicted the Dueling Club's curricullum. Harry had his suspicions about the whole thing and the other members of their little group shared them - except for Daphne, who only smirked knowingly and said nothing. Valeria paid their and any other third party's suspicions no heed, safe in the knowledge that Professor Snape couldn't accuse her of cheating for prognostication more than five hours ahead of time... or so he thought.

The morning before the club's first meeting was wasted raising Flobberworms under Hagrid's uncaring stare. The half-giant had completely ignored any complaints on the boring nature of the lesson, or the disgusting nature of the magical creatures studied. He firmly informed them that the double-mouthed, foot-long, slimy heralds of disgust and apathy were part of the Ministry-approved curricullum and that they had to have lessons about them. In reality, it was one of the ploys Valeria had jokingly come up with back at the start of the year to make Hagrid's class more interesting. She was surprised - and dismayed - that Hagrid had both remembered and decided to implement the plan. When the lesson finally came to an end and Hagrid announced they were officially done with Flobberworms, the class rejoiced. When he told them he had prepared something extra special for their next lesson, his relieved pupils cheered - even Draco Malfoy. Most of them seemed to prefer monsters over Flobberworms - who knew, huh?

When the time for the Dueling Club's first meeting came, over a hundred excited students from all seven years and four Houses gathered in the Great Hall. Fifth and seventh year students were less numerous, and there were less Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws than Slytherins or Gryffindors, but otherwise interest was quite high. The usual dining tables and chairs had been removed and the bare stone floor that remained felt unnatural at their every step. It was hard as ever and did not yield under their weight but their feet were still slowed as if walking on sand. Valeria suspected the entire hall had been covered in Cushioning Charms in preparation for the oncoming duels. In addition, about a dozen of life-sized wooden dolls were in evidence, man-shaped but featureless. Targets, perhaps? That was one thing about the club she had neither designed nor expected.

"Gather round everyone." Professor Lupin said in his friendly but perpetually exhausted tone. Valeria's research beyond the standard and heavily censored Ministry textbooks had revealed that a werewolf's transformation was at least as harmful as having every bone in one's body broken and restored with healing spells. Having to go through it once per month took a tremendous toll on one's health, leaving the victim in pain their entire life but especially during the first day of the cycle after the monthly transformation... unless one was willing to feed his inner beast with human flesh. Werewolves like Greyback who reveled in hunting and killing could actually enjoy the change and eventually became wolflike even beyond the full Moon, while those like Lupin slowly withered and died. The problem was, the one solution she'd found using rudimentary knowledge of Astronomy could not be applied because it would cause a far greater social and political backlash than the Wolfsbane Potion already had.

"...because we're going to have three different groups in the Club." Lupin was saying, the multiplying whispers and discussions around her drawing Valeria's attention back to his little speech. "The begginers' group is open to everyone, and requires no special knowledge. The intermediate group requires the entrant to show a good grasp of the Disarming Charm, the basic Shield Charm, the Silencing Charm, the Stunning Spell, the Smokescreen Spell, and the basic Counterspell. The advanced group requires Nonverbal casting of those six spells, at least ten hits on one of the provided practice dummies in under a minute, and shielding yourselves from at least one Stunner cast by me." Everyone's excitement mounted at being given such a practical test, most of them envisioning themselves entering the advanced group easily. Despite her preparation, Valeria did not join her housemates in their boasting; she still remembered how a single upperclassman almost took on her and all her friends last year, and the problems their little group had with handling Inferi. In some ways, Professor Lupin's requirements went even further than what she had suggested. Given prior evidence, she wasn't sure anyone would make it to the advanced group at all.

 **...**

"I'd bet a galleon I'd be doing better than you, but it would be a bad investment." The infuriating first year casually insulted Ginny's family for the third time that week. Normally, the youngest and most dangerous Weasley still in Hogwarts would have retaliated with a Bat-Bogey Hex but she didn't want to draw unwanted attention. She'd been waiting for the opportunity to learn how to Duel for ages; she wouldn't waste it to get back at a younger girl. On the other hand...

"Dream on, little Snake." Ginny put as much scorn as she could into her voice. One couldn't really expect any better from someone who sucked up to Draco Malfoy of all people, but that was no reason to be polite. "I grew up with six older brothers. Not only did that give me a great deal of practice but the Weasleys aren't in danger of becoming extinct, like certain other families I could name.

"Ooooh, is the little red kitty trying to roar? I'm only hearing a hiss." The tall, willowy, dark-haired firstie smirked while the Carrow Twins, the menaces in Ginny's year, just rolled their eyes and continued their conversation with Colin Creevey. The boy was trying to convert the Twins into Potter-worship and only a few months ago Ginny would have gladly joined them. The Inferi attack on Hogsmeade however had really opened her eyes on all the risks Harry and his friends took during their little adventures, especially after her parents attended the funerals of the three dead Aurors. That had really been an eye-opener for Ginny. "Tell you what." The annoying firstie went on. "We both try for the advanced group; whoever gets closest to entering wins. The loser gets to join the victor in hourly practice sessions once per week... as the target."

"You're on, Greengrass." Ginny answered the challenge determinedly. She never wanted to feel useless against a foe as Ron had admitted he had when his spells failed against the Inferi, and walking corpses would not be bothered by a Bat-Bogey Hex. It was time for the youngest Weasley to step up her game. Besides, Harry would be trying for the advanced group for sure. She no longer looked up to him as an invincible hero but that would not stop her from just looking.

 **...**

 _"Expelliarmus! Expelliarmus! Expelliarmus! Expelliarmus! Expelliarmus! Expelliarmus"_

Harry felt as if he was fighting off a tongue-tying jinx as he repeated that incantation at a frenetic pace but he kept casting. He had neither the focus to cast nonverbally with any speed, nor the power to send a barrage of stronger spells for long enough to get a good number of hits so the Disarming Charm it was. His only consolation was the fact that nobody else under sixth year had managed to enter the advanced group yet. Daphne had only begun trying nonverbal spells, Valeria had not been focused on anything less dangerous than the Severing Charm, and he, Ron, and Neville had not been practicing as often as they had. Nobody else among the younger years except Cedric Diggory had even come close.

The greatest surprise had come from Professor Lupin's practice dummies. The first people who'd tried anything weaker than a solid Disarming Charm on them had had their spells deflecting off Shield Charms, often right back at the caster. But when they'd tried something stronger, the dummies animated and started dodging around with surprising agility and even good tactics. Harry's best show so far had been seventeen hits, more than good enough to pass but not the best. Daphne had shown perfect poise and uncanny accuracy, twenty-five hits with the Piercing Hex and two with the Severing Charm; executing her dummy by cutting it off at the knees and then decapitating it had garnered cheers from more than the Slytherins and a disapproving frown from Professor Lupin. Neville had gotten in a single hit after a long series of frustrating misses but the silver-blue bolt of magic he'd hurled with a sharp jab of his wand had turned his own practice dummy to dust. Ron had been either dead on target or wildly inaccurate with no middle ground, and Professor Lupin had actually stopped Valeria before the Slytherin girl even begun. Maybe the dangerous gleam in the blonde's eyes had reminded him of the Hogwarts Express debacle and he'd made the executive decision to avoid holes being melted into the Great Hall's walls?

"Hi Harry. Having fun?" His latest spell went wide at the question and he did a double-take.

"Ginny? What are you doing here?" He asked, bewildered. "You're trying for the advanced group, too?"

"Your lack of faith wounds me, Harry." She said with a smile that almost made him fumble his wand. "But no. I was just having a friendly competition with Astoria Greengrass."

"Daphne's sister?" Harry asked cautiously. The gleam in Ginny's eyes was decidedly Valeria-like, a herald of wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and great booms that shook the castle. He had to be careful not to say something stupid or insulting - if only that didn't become at least as hard as NEWTs when girls were around.

"Yeah, she's a pain in my... nevermind." She shook her head, sending her long crimson mane flying. "How about you? Any luck getting into the advanced group?"

"No dice." It was Harry's turn to frown. "I'm not good at all in silent casting."

"Right, because any kids near our age are. That's a NEWT-level skill, Harry!" She snorted dismissively, but Harry wasn't sure she was right. Daphne and Valeria were better than him in it... but maybe that was all those extra practice sessions making a difference. The Slytherin girls paid the kind of religious attention to their spellcasting that Dudley reserved for cheeseburgers and Sunday morning cartoons.

"Will you be joining us in the intermediate group?" He asked Ron's sister as everyone else finished their own tests too.

"Maybe later... I didn't know how to shield or stun." For a moment she seemed embarassed enough to make Harry uncomfortable, face and ears getting even redder than Ron's when someone insulted the Chudley Cannons, but then a small smile broke through. "Then again, neither could Astoria I-am-so-awesome Greengrass! Excuse me, Harry, I need to go rub someone's failures in their face." She practically danced across the Great Hall, moving towards the begginers' group.

Oh boy, if Ron and Daphne got wind of this little rivalry there would be trouble.

 **...**

The first meeting of the Dueling Club was a harsh reality check but not entirely unexpected, Valeria thought as she prepared for another five hours of illegal potion-brewing. She and her friends were only third years still; being proven better than any other student had been a rather unrealistic expectation that she'd probably only shared with Ron. On the other hand the borderline abysmal showing of the vast majority of the attending students, with only those who'd been practicing beyond the normal lessons being any good for their age, highlighted just how much damage the Dark Wanker's jinx on the Defense position had already caused. If that performance was representative of the majority of the students over the past three decades, when Tom Riddle regained a body the Ministry would probably fall in less than a year.

Setting up the materials and cauldron for brewing something that might help against the more recent threats against the school, she stumbled upon a large envelope placed within her potions kit in a rather obvious way. Someone had wanted her to find it and since only she had access to her highly secure magical trunk and the envelope bore a letter written in her own hand, her future self was the only possible culprit... she hoped. Setting aside curiosity for a moment in order to cast various revealing charms, she picked it up only after ensuring it had not been cursed or poisoned and even then she still used her protective dragonhide gloves to do it. There was such a thing as undetectable poisons and concealed curses after all.

 _To whomever it may concern;_

 _If the presence of this envelope does not surprise you, carry it back to the limits of the device you've been using and leave it for other concerned parties to find and carry in turn. If it does surprise you however, you must read it carefully, follow the instructions on the inside to the best of your ability, and hope the backlash is not more extensive than has already been revealed. The information is incomplete, and deliberately so; being aware of certain facts will predispose you towards certain reactions, and set things in stone that must be fluid at all costs._

 _PS: Do try not to get killed._

With more than a little trepidation, Valeria opened the envelope and begun examining its contents. The brilliance of her future idea to not only piggyback a letter into the past through multiple consequetive time travels in reverse order but to also word the instructions in such a way that it would go precisely as far back as it was meant to was only rivalled by the horrendous risk its presence alone posed. Having come further back - possibly much further back - in time than the five hour limitation the safety and stability charms on the Time-Turner normally allowed, nothing but extreme caution and a great deal of luck would not have it breaking causality and causing Marvel or DC worthy continuity snarls. Valeria was sorely tempted to burn all of it to ash then and there, and would have already done so if not for her future self's last warning. Getting killed did not appeal to her much, so she sat down and read.

For the first time since the young witch had begun using Time Magic she was going to have some serious nightmares.


	67. Belated Gifts

**I might need to change the story's rating to 'M' for this chapter alone. Child abuse and torture mentioned at least in passing, though no descriptions are given.**

 **lightning king: murder in canon really damages the soul - if it didn't, Snape wouldn't be worried about the state of his own. The Horcrux ritual can use this damage to further tear the soul apart in an unnatural way and create a soul anchor, but it doesn't need to be done immediately; Myrtle's murder was used for the Diary's creation a significant length of time after the girl's death, for example. Remorse can repair the damage even if the soul is torn, but consider how horrible one feels when being genuinely remorseful about an accidental killing. Someone feeling genuine remorse for a murder and subsequent horrible ritual that goes against the natural order is probably going to perish of shock or commit suicide, or something.**

 **Urazz: yep, Val has to send the letter back again and again in an unbroken chain, which is a considerable downside. It requires heavy use of the Time-Turner in a tight schedule and a single slip would break the chain. That's why she didn't specifically plan to send it back to a given time but rather arranged it to go as far back as luck and circumstances would allow the chain to remain unbroken. Using future knowledge to send it to the past specifically would cause paradox.**

 **Tomon: they were just disappointed for not getting into the advanced class. And yes, they are more advanced than their peers, mostly in how they use magic rather than knowing more of it. (except for Val - but she got tutored by Riddle and got a time-turner).**

 **angry pixels: we got time for that yet.**

 **ReBein: Chapter 76 is titled 'The Price of Knowledge'.**

 **Serpentine13: The Unspeakables already reversed aging. Unfortunately the magic is unstable, as one of the Death Eaters discovered.**

 **The Viking Stranger: Val's relationship woes will have to wait till later if for no other reason than the potential backlash. The average enraged girlfriend will kick one's ass. Scorned dark witches OTOH tend to cast major curses on somewhat bigger targets - such as kingdoms :)**

 **ro781727: Worse things have been done for and with knowledge than anything else. One should remember this phrase; "kālo'smi lokakṣayakṛtpravṛddho lokānsamāhartumiha pravṛttaḥ"**

 **Toraach: Many younger kids have undeveloped morality. As for Malfoy, he's good at a fairly broad variety of magic. Unfortunately, he is too spoiled to apply himself. Under enough pressure however, he proved capable of fixing the Vanishing Cabinet - which is pretty advanced magic.**

 **Riniko22: Thanks for all the reviews! Val loves her family and respects them despite their being nonmagical. As she concentrates on saving hers and her friends' lives in the magical world, she missed her mother's lie. Unicorn's blood is tainted by the harm to the unicorn (as Firenze explains), but unicorns would not willingly part with it for almost anything. It's a good thing the DoM has tight control over their Time-Turners... usually.**

 **Disclaimer: Were the Death Eaters ever shown to do something worse than the Ministry's let's-feed-them-to-Dementors act, or assorted bigotries? If not, I don't own Harry Potter; it belongs to JK Rowling.**

 **...**

Harry eyed the large bottle that shone like a miniature sun had been thrown into the liquid within and wondered whether he should use it that day. He had no idea what it was, but he trusted Valeria and her belated Christmas gift more than he did most professors - usually. When she didn't suggest trying to outfly the Dementors for an illicit Hogsmeade visit anyway.

The problem was his progress in his Patronus lessons with Professor Lupin - or lack thereof. After several weekly meetings with a Boggart-turned-Dementor, he was only succeeding in conjuring silver mist, what both Valeria and Professor Lupin called an incorporeal Patronus. However pleasantly surprised at that outcome the friendly Defense Professor might have been - and however angry at herself Valeria was for failing to match that success - Harry could barely fend off a Boggart pretending to be a Dementor. What would happen if he had to face the real thing once again? What would happen if he had to face several?

He reluctantly returned the shiny concoction to the purse Tracey had gifted him for Christmas. The girls had all insisted on his being prepared for the unexpected at all times and even though the small undetectably expanded container was decidedly girly, Ron and Neville had backed them up. The bottle joined his wand, a vial of blood-replenishing potion, two bezoars, his invisibility cloak, some fire-walking philter, a communication mirror, the Monster Book of Monsters "improved" with as many variable engorgement and protective enchantments their little group could come up with, and one knut. Harry shuddered; the tiny fake coin was the most dangerous object in there.

Deciding that if Dementors showed up in the coming game he could always drink the potion then and there, he determinedly set out for the Quidditch field. It was time to win another game - and hopefully the Cup - for Gryffindor.

 **...**

"I can't believe you convinced me to come." Valeria huffed in irritation, tossing her blonde hair behind one shoulder. Daphne, whose silver mane was longer and more elegant and who must have practiced that same motion to a far higher degree of mastery, rolled her eyes.

"It's just a Quidditch game, it's not going to kill us." the third member of their little group said, face not coming up from Hagrid's latest essay on cross-species breeding. The other Slytherins around them did not know whether to be impressed by Tracey's abysmally low esteem of the Gryffindors' Quidditch skills that she had to bring homework to a game, or disdainful at her being genuinely interested in one of Hagrid's assignments.

"I beg to differ." Valeria disagreed. "You are not taking divination so you don't have to listen to all the ways we'll get to die horribly if Trelawney's predictions prove true." And neither did Tracey get a cryptic message from her future self with detailed instructions to be followed to the letter but little to no information. Observer bias was a very important factor where Time-related magic was concerned. Unless she was willing to court paradox, events she'd already observed or otherwise knew about would happen because they were causally anchored. The more she needed to influence events, the less informed she had to be, and given how little that letter from her future self actually said, things were going to get ugly.

"Sucks to be you, I guess." The mousy brunette said noncommitally. "In other news, did you hear about Hagrid bringing in a Manticore for his NEWT-level class? Is that hardcore or what?" Of course Hagrid would bring in a magical beast the size and shape of a large tiger, with the same kind of natural weapons, strength and agility backed up by a hide that resisted most spells, a scorpion-like tail whose poison was instantly lethal to most creatures, and the near-human intellect to use them well and outsmart the average teenager.

"Oh please." Daphne scoffed as the Gryffindor chaser trio scored for the first time and almost everyone in the Slytherin stands booed - though some of the older boys were eyeing Katie Bell, Alicia Spinnet, and Angelina Jhonson with something other than annoyance. "Bad Kitty is perfectly harmless as long as you don't annoy him. Here's to hoping that some of our esteemed Housemates do." The pureblood witch saluted Flint and his gang. The boys had no attention to spare for the eldest Greengrass daughter, trying as they were to record the Gryffindor chasers' maneuvers with a pair of omnioculars. That was a huge tactical blunder, in Valeria's opninion.

This was going to be a very long Saturday morning, Valeria thought.

 **...**

"Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday, Dear Bella, Happy Birthday to you!" The song was silly, the lyrics and music weak, and it was of muggle origin; a perfect irony given today's target, Bella thought. The festivities were somewhat lacking in grandeur and sincerity of course, but given who and where they were at the moment, it was to be expected. Besides, her birthday gift made up for any deficiencies in other areas. Picking up the knife, she stared at the small, unassuming packaging critically. At first glance, it was hardly impressive - until one considered the circumstances. Giving in to an inexplicable urge to not be so hasty, she set the knife aside and smiled.

"Well, little girl?" Bellatrix asked the tiny redhead. "Are you having fun yet?" Predictably, the girl shook her head.

"Naturally." Bellatrix agreed. "Boys can't sing worth a damn, let me tell you. Fortunately, they do have other uses." Bellatrix cackled, though not at her own words; the little girl had rolled her eyes in either agreement or exasperation, despite her obvious fear. It urged Bellatrix to go on with her little monologue despite the quality of the audience.

"Useless things have a way of disappearing - not unlike your father." She said in her best instructor's tone, getting a fairly impressive glare from the girl for her efforts. "Daddy's your little hero, is he? Don't worry, we all have our delusions. Why, his very family abandoned him for his deficiencies - one of the few good decisions they made." She patted the girl's head fondly even as her reluctant student tried to escape her bonds to no avail.

"Fortunately for you, with the right training you could be far less useless than your father." She brandished the knife again, sudden inspiration blossoming into a full-blown plan. It had just occured to her that their initial design was rather wasteful of the very unlikely coincidence that had led to their contacts in the Ministry providing them with today's bounty. "Do you want to be useful, child?" The girl only glared, the dark witch sighed, and one of the boys finally spoke up.

"Come on, Bella, stop playing with the ingredients." Her nominal husband said, not understanding the glorious new goal she'd come up with. "We're on a schedule here. Let's get this ritual over with, wasteful though it is." Ruddy wasn't in agreement with Bella just then. He had his own reasons for thinking the ritual wasteful - pot, kettle, black. Rather appropriate since he'd married a Black.

"I am teaching, Rodolphus." She said in a dangerously calm tone that, along with her use of his full name, was a clear indication of her rising temper. "Do not interrupt me again." Her nominal husband promptly shut up. Whatever his talents, the man was a coward; that had become clear enough during their wedding night so many years ago. That made him both easy and fairly safe to control, if not very fun. There was a reason Bellatrix had devoted herself to the Dark Lord after all. Brandishing the knife in the child's direction, she stared at the much younger witch.

"If you are willing to be useful, you will survive today." She said bluntly. "It will hurt so much you'll wish you were dead, but the pain will only be a small part of your future. And it will be only pain." Selwyn was staring at her with an unreadable expression; the other Death Eaters had been left speechless. "If you prove useless instead, your future will be less painful in the long run, but far more horrible if my dear husband has anything to say about it." Rodolphus perked up at that, the idiot, while the girl stared fearfully at him. "So child, are you willing to be useful?" The girl considered the dillema for a few moments, then nodded. Good. Bellatrix had no use for stupid students.

"What are you doing, Bella?" Selwyn asked angrily. "Our plan against Dumbledore hinges on us predicting his movements - this is not the time for your mad schemes."

"Mad schemes?" Bellatrix giggled as she started carving the runes on the bare stone with no magic at all, except for making her knife unbreakable. It was a tiring job that required much precision, one she could not trust to anybody else. Moreover, it was one none of the others would be willing to perform; they detested manual labor as much as she, and made no allowances for the deeper mysteries of magic. "Time for your first magic lesson, child." She said, not looking up from her work to either the bound girl or Selwyn. "Sacrifice is the basis for some of the oldest and strongest magic. An unwilling, forced sacrifice is worth less than a willing one, however horrible it might be. What we will attempt here today is one of the least known and most effective forms of Divination - the art of uncovering the future. It is a strong spell; were you a worthless muggle, even your willing death would not be enough to power it. But we're in luck; you're a witch - or will be. Your death would certainly work, and is how the discipline of Anthropomancy became both banned and feared." Working her way through a third rune despite her protesting limbs - the years in Azkaban had not been kind - she cackled. "Divining the future in a magical person's entrails was too much for the Ministry, despite their keeping Dementors in their employ. Don't worry though." She said to the now shaking girl. "Willing sacrifices being stronger, your death will not be required."

Carving the series of runes took a long time, and not only because it was hard physical work; Bellatrix's Ancient Greek was rusty. This form of magic had been developed, even approved, back before that magical nation turned into a bunch of useless philosophers. Performing the ritual with the original symbols might be cumbersome, but as it had been banned for centuries nobody had bothered to update it in a newer magical script; it was a four-thousand-year-old language or nothing. Repeating the work of the ancient Seer Calchas who had once sacrificed a muggle king's daughter to predict the outcome of the war said king had started to reclaim his brother's faithless wife, Bellatrix put all her efforts into divining a simpler but far more important answer; whether Albus Dumbledore would be watching that morning's Quidditch match in Hogwarts. Half an hour later and after having healed the unconscious girl, she smirked at the others.

"Dumbledore is not present; we can proceed." She said, and most of the others shared her anticipation. Selwyn, however, did not.

"You're playing a very dangerous game, Bella." He warned.

"Perhaps." She shrugged. "A reusable sacrifice might be worth it though." She left it at that, not at all certain she'd had him convinced.

 **...**

A group of Slytherins led by Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson wore voluminous, really wornblack robes and cowls and entered the Quidditch pitch at ground level. Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle were there as muscle, and Theodore Nott had been convinced by the offer of a future favor but for Pansy and Draco it was personal. Potter and his posse had caused them no end of trouble over the past few years; disguising themselves as Dementors to scare Potter into losing the Snitch was only a side-dish to their upcoming revenge. Unfortunately for the vengeful quintet, some far more powerful and far more ruthless people had prepared their own dish served cold, and the unlucky Slytherins were caught in the crossfire along with a great many other people.

The first to fail were the sticking charms, cast to end on a specific trigger their creator readily provided. Crude supports fell one by one, no longer held together with magic. The hardening charm had not been set up as a trap but it made no difference; without the additional supports, the weight it had to hold was too much and it too failed - exactly as it had been designed to do. And then the small cavern beneath the elevated quidditch stands for Gryffindor House, created through liberall application of vanishing spells for precisely that purpose, begun to collapse taking over a hundred students with it.

 **...**

"Bloody hell!"

Harry couldn't fault Oliver's language as with a mighty roar and amid hundreds of terrified screams the Gryffindor stands begun to tilt dangerously, even as their foundation seemed to implode into a giant sinkhole. It took even the Professors precious seconds to react, and when they did a half-dozen sun-bright threads of magic came out of their wands, first from Flitwick's and Snape's, then Lupin's, McGonagal's, and Sprout's. The threads wrapped around the entire wooden construct of the stands and seemed to strain, but finally prevented it from collapsing... at least for the moment. Harry had no idea how long the Professors could hold the enormous weight or whether they had something else up their sleeve to save his Housemates but it didn't matter. For Harry had seen a small group of people disappearing into the collapsing ground, and not coming up again.

Game forgotten, he put his new and awesome broomstick through a high-speed dive, straight towards the dark chasm beneath the precariously levitated targets.

 **...**

"Merlin's balls!" someone swore and to Valeria's great surprise it turned out to be Daphne. Having no time to contemplate her prim and proper pureblood witch's crude swearing, the muggleborn Slytherin evaluated the situation quickly and efficiently as Father and Mother had taught her. The Campbells had been in warzones before, a lot more than once. They'd always been under heavy guard from one side or another, but that didn't make the realities of war any less apparent to their two intelligent and highly perceptive children. Since then, Valeria had also taken part -even led- some fairly hairy counter-terrorist actions within her own freaking school. For most intents and purposes, Harry, Neville, Daphne, Tracey, Ron, and Valeria herself had been child soldiers, albeit briefly. Often, that very fact made Valeria angry enough to plan the grisly murders of certain members of the faculty in her head. Right then however, she was thankful for all the prior experience; instead of shocked disbelief, multiple plans went through her mind in seconds. Within a count of ten, it became apparent that any effort from her or her friends would be practically useless; the professors themselves were hard-pressed to hold back the collapse of so massive an object without any preparation. At the same time, a single line of directions from the future letter became clear, and Valeria was happy she'd followed them.

"Daphne, Tracey, cast the spell we learned yesterday at me." A bit confused but not knowing what else to do her friends did, and Valeria followed suit.

 _"Sonorus! Sonorus! Sonorus!"_

 **"SHUT UP"**

Her voice boomed through the Quidditch pit like a thunderbolt, nearby Slytherins even being forced to put their hands in their ears to prevent the hugely amplified voice from hurting them.

" **IF YOU'RE DONE SCREAMING USELESSLY, EVERYONE WITH A WAND CAST FEATHERWEIGHT AND LEVITATION CHARMS ON THE COLLAPSING STANDS. EVERYONE WITH A BROOM, START EVACUATING BEFORE THE PROFESSORS' EFFORTS FAIL. EVERYONE ON THE COLLAPSING STANDS, SIT TIGHT AND KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR ANYONE THAT MIGHT FALL OFF; USE LEVITATION OR FEATHERLIGHT CHARMS IF THEY DO. MOVE!"**

They did. Not all of them by any stretch -not even half- but enough. Even those that didn't help stopped screaming and running around, or threatening to make fifty-foot dives to the ground out of fear. In the presence of direction, order, panic diminished considerably and nearly two hundred wands went to work. The Gryffindor team, led by Harry himself, made short work of the evacuation, a broomstick being able to make the trip to the ground and back in seconds. The idiotic Gryffindor boy, being the lightest and the one with the best broom, volunteered to take care of the seventh and sixth year students. In the end, over a hundred wands and fourteen people on brooms made short work of the emergency. Nobody seemed much the worse for wear, and Valeria sighed in relief.

That was when Harry fainted and fell off his broom...


	68. Aftermath

**Unfortunately, I need to limit ny author's notes so I can't respond to every comment.**

 **lightning king: Why expel Malfoy? The Death Eaters did it to undermine Dumbledore's position in Hogwarts. Literally, that is.**

 **Urazz/Tomon: If the maximum weight you can lift is about 100 pounds, what happens if you lift 150 while under the effects of high adrenaline, especially if you repeat the stunt over a dozen times?**

 **The Viking Stranger: well, the group has the only six students who willingly tried to stop the Dark Wanker while still first years. Collapsing Quidditch stands are far less scary than that.**

 **a1993: Yeah, that girl is going to have it bad before the end.**

 **White Squirrel: Take a spiral, stretch it and press it down in a two-dimensional shape until the loops touch but don't overlap, and you'll be seeing Val's timeline. Each 'backtracking' of 5 hours must touch but can't overlap both the previous and the next one for the backwards message chain to work.**

 **Riniko22: The Inferi won't sink into softened soil as it's a lot heavier than them. Unlike mud, it won't be mostly water but stone. And stone is 3-4 times heavier than people. But the real reason is that most witches and wizards in the past 36 years had dismal Defense training so they fall back to the basics - which don't include combat Transfiguration or large-scale Charms. As for the Death Eaters, those nine are some of the Dark Wanker's most powerful minions. Bellatrix went through the Battle of Hogwarts with another's wand and curbstomped everyone except Molly Weasley.**

 **Disclaimer: Did we ever see Harry suffer lasting serious injuries after all the horrible situations he went through? If not, I don't own Harry Potter. It belongs to JK Rowling.**

 **...**

"You're right mental, mate." Those were literally the first words Harry heard as he returned to consciousness after the events in the Quidditch pit. That they came from Ron while the redhead waited for Harry to recover from his latest "adventure" made them that much harder to refute.

"Don't coddle him, Weasley." A girl's voice said sharply. "Flying not once, not twice, but five times into an unstable sinkhole to save Malfoy and his cronies was not just mental. It was the kind of stupidity legends are made of." Daphne walked into Harry's narrow and blurry field of vision and jabbed a finger at him accusingly. "Legends about _you_."

"I am hailed as a hero though, aren't I?" Speaking seemed to require considerable effort on his part, even though he was too numb to feel any wounds. Better to just smile than try to speak some more and fail.

"People with a projected month-long recovery time are not allowed to smirk, you tosser!" The tall Slytherin witch hissed.

"Yeah, mate." Ron uncharacteristically agreed. "Wait to hear Madam Pomfrey's diagnosis first, OK?"

Harry's curiosity was short-lived as the rather furious Matron practically charged into the room and forced his two friends into full retreat.

"Are you insane, Potter?" She snarled. "Do you have any idea what happens when you push yourself beyond your limits?" She huffed. "No, of course you don't! If you did, you wouldn't have volunteered to air-lift several students larger and heavier than yourself!" Harry had no idea why everyone was shouting at him. No falling masonry had actually hit him, he'd had no high-speed impacts, and he'd only fallen off his broom once from a relatively low height. As for carrying those students to safety, weren't even muggles supposed to lift extreme weights in emergencies? Wizards were tougher than nonmagicals by a fair margin, too.

"Exceeding your limits once or twice is only mildly harmful, young man. Doing so over a dozen times in the span of a few minutes?" The experienced Mediwitch stared at him murderously, then threw her arms skywards. "Bah, why am I even bothering? You obviously don't care that you damaged half your ligaments and muscles in your arms and back. Or that you damaged the structure of over seventy bones that now have to be vanished and regrown if you're to make a full recovery. Or that the damage in your spine will take weeks to heal even with magic. Or that you're so full of numbing potions you need to take an antidote every so often or risk getting poisoned by the overdose..."

While shouting at him more than the ever had, Madam Pomfrey cast a series of diagnostic spells, wrote down the results in a notebook, then turned around and left Harry alone with his thoughts. The prospects of a long recovery did not alarm him much, even if this one would be longer than most; he and the infirmary were old friends. The unreadable clash of expressions on Draco Malfoy's bloody face as Harry dragged him from under a pile of rocks and flew him to safety was more worrying by far. And what of Neville, Tracey, and Valeria? Were they somewhere in the infirmary, recovering from the events in the pitch as well? Is that why they had not come to visit? What if...

Harry did not notice when he drifted off to sleep under the weight of his exhaustion and a triple dose of medical potions.

 **...**

Valeria was staring at the merrily bubbling purple liquid as she angrily shook a jar full of powdered porcupine quills. Professor Snape shot her a look while working over his own cauldron and snorted.

"I believe the quills have been shaken vigorously enough by now, Campbell." He noted as he stirred his own orange mixture. Holding back a scathing retort, Valeria added the readied powder until her mixture turned red. Then, gripping the ladle so tightly her knuckles were white, she stirred the potion until it, too, had turned orange.

"Why are you being difficult, Campbell?" Her Head of House drawled as they both added more quills till their potions had turned orange. "Potter's your boyfriend - is that it?" He said with a smirk that fanned Valeria's simmering fury to a new height. As with all students, the Potions Master was trying to get a rise out of her - and succeeding. The Slytherin witch rather missed his usual torrent of insults and angry retorts, though as those were unlikely to affect her at all she understood why he was trying a new approach.

"Self-control is a valuable quality." Her jailor was saying as they were adding powdered unicorn horn. "Why, if you had more of it you would be visiting Potter in the Infirmary instead of being in detention for having insulted the entire student body."

"Yes, because speaking the truth is an insult." She responded caustically, but Professor Snape nodded.

"The truth is a dangerous thing. Speaking it can do great harm." He said solemnly. Curiosity momentarily overcame Valeria's anger at the world in general, and the Slytherin Prefects in particular. They were the only ones to complain about her actions on the Quidditch pitch, giving her Head of House an excuse to invite her in one of their admittedly rare meetings. She and her friends were usually too prepared and too experienced to end up in detention. But Professor Snape's actions since her arrival here were a bit unusual - beyond just his strangely calm demeanor that was. What was going on?

Was he trying to pry into her mind again? Now that she thought about it, Valeria could feel a very faint touch in her thoughts. Had it not been for the Diary trying to influence her for an entire year, she would have missed it. Having found it though, what was she to do? Decent Occlumency was beyond her, and with all her other projects she'd yet to build another mind shielding helmet or similar device. On the other hand she'd practiced a lot more in directing her emotions after having to call them up at will to fuel certain spells, and such light Legilimency efforts would probably not pick up complex thoughts.

More than one person in this room could play mind games and with luck, directing enough anger at Professor Snape might 'accidentally' set him on fire.

 **...**

 _Who were the members of the Order of the Phoenix?_

 _How did the Order's command and information network work?_

 _What spells did the Order often use in protection, concealment, communications, and combat?_

 _What unusual, invented or variant spells and potions did the Order use? Please be detailed._

 _What were the twenty largest or most important Order missions? Give tactical details if possible._

 _From where did the Order receive funds, ingredients, and artifacts, and how did it use them?_

 _Who were the members of the Death Eaters?_

 _How did the Death Eaters' command and information network work?_

 _What spells did Death Eaters often use in protection, concealment, communications, and combat?_

 _What unusual, invented or variant spells and potions did Death Eaters use? Please be detailed._

 _What were the twenty largest or most important Death Eater missions? Give tactical details if possible._

 _From where did the Death Eaters receive funds, ingredients, and artifacts, and how did it use them?_

 _What do you know of James and Lily Potter and their ten closest friends or allies?_

 _What do you know of the Potters' death and the events that led to it?_

 _What do you know of Sirius Black and his ties to the Potters and the Dark Lord?_

Neville Longbottom stared at the rat-faced man meticulously filling out the answers to the questions their group had decided were the most important, and tried to disguise his hate. That scum was a filthy Death Eater, a filthy traitor, a filthy coward... and he'd been a Gryffindor. He'd never been more ashamed of his House in his entire life. If not for all the good the answers to those questions would be doing, he would have already hexed him to oblivion, consequences be damned. His fugitive pals had almost murdered all of Gryffindor yesterday, and Neville was itching to return the favor. The Bitch was their leader after all.

"Don't worry, Neville." The mousy Slytherin girl said with a small smile. "As soon as our new friend is done with this and a few other tasks, we'll have a party." And with that remark, she winked at him. Neville no longer found some of the... harsher suggestions Harry made in anger as repulsive anymore. He was almost certain he believed more in the idea of revenge now than either Harry or Ron; the image of his parents lying unknowing and unfeeling in their beds in St. Mungo's would not allow him to be anything else. At the same time, he was glad he would finally find why and how his and Harry's parents ended up as they did. Gran had always believed he should be proud of what they had done, but how could he when he knew so little of their past?

Unfortunately, keeping a Death Eater effectively contained was both dangerous and extremely time-consuming. The potion they'd been using was, of course, bot expensive and illegal but that was far from the only problem. Even under its effects, Pettigrew was not compelled to do as they said; he simply was their very good friend. They had to keep a level of cordiality, even politeness, to get him to do anything and things he did not want to do they had to convince him on. Daphne and -suprisingly- Harry had proven very good at that, and Ron was excellent at thinking up the best tactics and questions that would net them juicy secrets.

That was what Neville and Tracey were doing now; keeping an eye on the Death Eater while the rest of the group were busy. Not only they had to keep company to the scum and give him a reason, however far-fetched, to keep incriminating himself but they were also responsible for the recording equipment. Valeria had insisted on endless preparations for anything, from writing the answers on parchment enchanted to ferret out lies, to pairs of omnioculars recording everything, to a resizing choker the traitor now wore that would follow him between forms. Beyond just being resizing and unbreakable, the choker had a tracking charm on it. Neville had asked for additional security and the Slytherin enchantress had rolled her eyes and told him to remember the reason wizards didn't put both resizing and durability charms on everything they wore.

Shrinking magically durable clothing could crush their wearer to death by malfunction or design. Neville could live with that.

 **...**

"Potter's little group knows nothing important about the Azkaban escapees." Severus said without preamble as he entered his office and Albus Dumbledore exhaled in relief.

"If you're certain, Severus." Harry's adventures over the past few years had proven he could and would get involved in frighteningly dangerous situation with alarming frequency, for an underage child. Some of those instances had been at Dumbledore's maneuvering and under his elaborate precautions to help Harry slowly get introduced to and deal with the terrible destiny that awaited him, but a lot more had not. Dumbledore was doing his best to prepare him and the newest generation despite all the obsctacles the Darker families and Tom's past actions were throwing in his way while still allowing them as many carefree moments to enjoy their childhood as possible. Letting them tangle with Tom's worst supporters at such a young age however? Out of the question.

"The Campbell girl has become very good at keeping secrets, but not perfect." Severus snorted. "She's also too emotional to control herself under pressure. As much so as the Potter brat, if in a different direction. If she were leading Potter down the Dark Side, or had the same cold indifference or gleeful acceptance towards the Dark Lord's goals and ideas as other Dark witches and wizards, I would have seen so during our recent detentions together. If anything, she actually cares for the brat given how angry she is at being kept away from him." The rest of his answer came out in an angry mutter but Dumbledore heard anyway. "However undeserving Potter's spawn might be."

"You do tend to see the worst in most people." The Headmaster commented. "That, Severus, is almost as big a falt as not allowing others to see the best of you."

"Let's agree to disagree." Severus said obstinately. "What happens now?"

"Why, I answer the Minister's rather friendly invitation to explain events." Dumbledore said, showing little concern. "Thanks to the efforts of the faculty and more than a few brave students, there were no fatalities. Remarkable, all things considered, so we should avoid any administrative unpleasantness."

"You can't possibly believe that." Severus retorted snidely.

"No," Dumbledore said cheerfully "but hope springs eternal. Do keep an eye on things while I'm away, will you?"

"Two eyes." Severus said solemnly.


	69. Moving pawns

**White Squirrel: sports success rx, american academy of pediatrics. Based it off the worst injuries mentioned for underage unsupervised weightlifting. Might have been a bit much, but doing it repeatedly under an adrenaline high could do enough damage to the cartilage and growth plates to require regrowth rather than healing IMHO.  
**

 **lightning king: Yeah, Rowling failed in romance. Other than that, the series does not show love conquering all. Snape's love failed, leaving him a broken man doing horrible things, however justified or brave. Draco was a coward and never did good to redeem himself - the Malfoys were pardoned thanks to Narcissa Malfoy's actions. The sacrificial protection triggered at actual sacrifice of a whole life or a piece of immortal soul. Dumbledore loved Gellert and helped make a monster while killing his sister by accident. Murder can get you immortality if you're careful enough while love can't. Molly Weasley killed Bellatrix after a decade's worth of built-up hatred for the murder of her brothers, after her enemy was wasted by Azkaban, while fearing for her daughter, and while her enemy was not using her own wand. And with soul-sucking demons around, people can be kept from joining their loved ones even in the afterlife. As for Voldemort, providing better action scenes and more horror is one of my goals for the story. His portrayal as a credible threat was worse than the portrayal of romance in the series.**

 **ro781727: Yep, though it's an anachronism.**

 **The Viking Stranger/Urazz: Just read on.**

 **Tomon: Harry could have loaned his broom to someone older, or used Levitation instead of physically lifting people. Snape has given detention for less, had Dumbledore's approval for this one, and he's Valeria's Head of House.**

 **Disclaimer: Everything Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling. No time to write a better disclaimer, it's six in the morning...**

 **...**

"Expecto Patronum!"

The silvery shade of a large animal coalesced out of Harry's Holly wand and launched itself at the boggart-turned-dementor, hurling it back into the cupboard Professor Lupin used to hold it between lessons. As it fled, the already faint screams of Lily Potter faded entirely and Harry exhaled in relief.

"Well done, Harry!" Professor Lupin congratulated him as he locked the cupboard and retrieved a chocolate bar from his stash. "A nearly corporeal Patronus is a great achievement for any student and unheard of for a third-year. Your parents would be proud." Harry thought about that in the relaxing silence that followed between bites of Honeydukes' best, and found out he agreed with his father's old friend. His mum and dad would be proud of him, he decided, even if they'd never get to say so in person. He was learning, both about magic and their past life from the unlikeliest of sources, the very traitor who betrayed them to Voldemort.

No, not Voldemort; Valeria was right. Using the title that monster created for himself was giving him too much credit. Better to just call him Tom or, since that was a name he abandoned, call him names that made him look silly or weak. That begged the question however; had Dumbledore lied to him then? If fear of the name increased fear of the man himself, why didn't the Headmaster follow his own advice?

"Deep thoughts, Harry?" Professor Lupin asked pleasantly. "Are you focusing on the memory you've been using to produce such an excellent Patronus then?" He took a sip from his butterbeer and sighed contendedly. "The more often and strongly you recall it, the easier it'll be to use against a real Dementor, you know." Harry looked at the shabbily dressed Defense Professor as he shared that very useful detail. Lupin had been the greatest teacher he'd ever had both because he was knowledgeable and because he was so approachable and friendly. Why did the Ministry and wizards in general have to discriminate against his kind to the point he could barely make ends meet? He'd never become a danger to anyone due to his own actions, not in all his years in Hogwarts, and he was kind and brave. Brave enough to fight along his parents in the war, brave enough to say 'Voldemort', as he'd proven in their first private meeting after the memorable lesson with the boggart.

"No, sir." He said seriously. "I was just wondering... how much did Professor Dumbledore tell you about last year?"

"Not much beyond what Hogwarts' very efficient rumor mill could tell me." Lupin said, his easy smile making his scarred, prematurely-aged face that much friendlier. "Congratulations, by the way. Saving lives seems to be becoming a habit for you and your friends." His smile turned wry. "An excellent trait to have, expecially if you could pair it with caution and common sense. That was a hint, by the way."

"I'm trying!" Harry said somewhat defensively. "Trouble tends to find me whatever I do, thought. But that wasn't what I meant to ask you, Professor."

"OK Harry. We'll set aside that argument for now, however convincing your argument wasn't." Lupin seemed to be enjoying himself. Given Wormtail's description of the Marauders, Harry did not doubt they'd had similar discussions more than once - especially given the younger Lupin's Prefect status. "What did you want to ask?"

"Are you sure you've never seen this before, Professor?" Harry asked. Not waiting for an answer, he wielded his wand in the way Valeria had instructed him.

I AM LORD VOLDEMORT

"Harry, what...?" Ignoring Professor Lupin's surprised question, Harry rearranged the phrase he'd written in letters of fire upon thin air.

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE

"Something I found out last year, sir." Harry said, nodding at the words. "My friends and I, we looked into it. Daphne and Neville could find only one wizarding family in which the name Marvolo occured regularly - or at all, in the past century; the presumed extinct Gaunts. Seeing as Tom himself told me his father was a muggle, and Ron found an award and several trophies to his name from fifty years ago..."

"You've spoken to Voldemort?!" Professor Lupin's bushy eyebrows would be in danger of flying off his forehead if they rose any further. "And he is a halfblood?" He shook his head. "Headmaster Dumbledore only told me you fended off his shade once. It was part of his attempts to convince me to take up the Defense post."

"That's what I thought." Harry said dejectedly, his faith in the Headmaster taking another blow. "Professor Dumbledore knew it all, sir. He taught Tom Riddle all those years ago, even." A tornado of emotions and thoughts went through Harry's mind as he tried to work out just what those facts meant. "And he hasn't told you, even though you were in the Order..."

Professor Lupin took an abrupt step back, as if by being punched to the face, and Harry realized he'd said something he shouldn't have. The normally preasant Professor's face shifted into harsher, angrier lines, his lips thinning down to a single line. _Way to go Potter_ , he could almost hear Daphne's voice in his head berating him for his lack of discretion.

"Harry..." Remus Lupin asked, looking at him as if he was seeing him for the first time. "Where, and from whom, did you learn that?"

 **...**

"Excellent! Now narrow the beam down to no more than an inch!"

Fat drops of sweat dripping down her face and back, hair frizzing up horribly in the heat and humidity, Valeria did as the diminutive Charms Master instructed. The red-hot torrent of fire she was shooting at the enormous tank Professor Flitwick had conjured, internally expanded, and filled with water obeyed sluggishly to her will and she resisted the impulse to force more mental effort into her attempt. An angry response would simply make the flames surge and escape her tentative control and after having gone through hours of casting to get to that point, messing up was not an option.

The torrent narrowed into a more coherent beam, its color changing from red, to orange, to a pale and blindingly bright yellow as the same amount of power was concentrated into less and less volume, and the depth of penetration into the tank's liquid contents increased dramatically. Valeria gulped and her resolve not to let the cursed fire loose increased in tandem with its predicted temperature according to the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. Rule of thumb; something was hot enough if you could use stellar classification on it.

"Thirty-two feet, Miss Campbell." The part-goblin observed. "A new record for you and one I'd have been hard pressed to match as a student."

"What can I say, Professor." She said, finally cutting off the power she was feeding into the spell and almost collapsing in exhaustion. "Fire is a specialty of mine."

"I should hope so, given your wand and character." Professor Flitwick cackled.

"What do you mean?" She asked, wiping beads of sweat with her sleeve after becoming comfortable on a softened floor tile. Propriety could take a hike; she was practically dead on her feet.

"Cherry makes for lethal power and as a tree has red fruit, combining it with dragon heartstring adds to both its strength and volatility, dragons are nigh untameable beasts of fire and ruin. As for you my dear, you're not exactly subtle or patient in most situations, you're confrontational and sometimes violent, and have a bit of a temper in the same way the ocean is wet." Professor Flitwick smiled at her, flicked his wand to dry out both her copious amounts of sweat and vanish the steam their experiments had produced, and raised an eyebrow in question. "Do I really need to go on?"

"Obviously not." Valeria huffed. "Merlin, I'm exhausted. What's the point of trying to learn control after being worked to within an inch of my life?"

"Your whining is not very becoming, my dear." Mister short-and-perky said with that insufferable smirk of his. "The control we're trying for is hardly required in your day-to-day life. It is under extreme circumstances and while wielding all the magic you can when you'll need to avoid disintegrating your companions and surroundings. The Hufflepuffs will be thankful if you manage it."

"The... Hufflepuffs?" She asked dumbly, her mind slowing down now that the so-called training session had come to an end. Torture session, more like.

"Mister Potter and your other close friends certainly don't seem to hold your lack of control against you, but you can't expect the rest of the student body to have so little in the way of self-preservation." Professor Flitwick said. "You did notice that none in Pomona's House have talked to you or approached you since your rather eventful train ride, have you not? Rumors from certain Badgers have even reached my House."

"Oh, you mean Diggory, Bones and the others?" Valeria considered it for a moment. Her interactions with that House did seem to be at an all-time low, but she'd thought it was about her rising reputation as someone that could and would curse those that annoyed her. "They're... afraid of me?"

"Miss Campbell, let me put it this way." The diminutive Charms Master said kindly. "You and your friends walked through an army of Inferi and lived to tell about it. That was after resolving the Chamber of Secrets fiasco last year and getting involved with the Philosopher's Stone the year before."

"Oh." Valeria frowned. "The stuff in Hogsmeade involved a lot of running, and hiding, and Harry being able to command snakes. Plus, a few hundred is hardly an army."

"Right, you're too tired to think straight." Professor Flitwick said, rolling his eyes. "Let me escort you to the Slytherin common room, then."

"No... no... I got lots of things to do." She muttered, thinking of how an unbroken chain of Reversals of Time had to be kept for a letter to travel through, the potions that were simmering in the last two compartments of her trunk, and the two Weasleys she had to interrogate about the whereabouts of a certain Maurauder artifact.

"And you'll do none of them if you have to spend a day in the infirmary after overworking yourself."

Valeria barely made the Reversal deadline that evening, and spent the extra five hours sleeping after sending the letter. Anything else could wait for a day.

 **...**

"What did they do, you reckon?" said redhead number one.

"No secret passages in this room so... no idea?" said redhead number two.

They both searched the empty classroom corner to corner to no avail. It had taken them hours of casting and dozens of trinkets used up, preceded by days of careful observation to finally get into the not-so-secret headquarters of ickle Ronniekins' group of friends but the Twins were nothing if not dedicated. Too bad there were no dirty secrets, no incriminating evidence, no blackmail material, no boys and girls in compromising positions to be found once they'd penetrated inside.

"Well, that was a bust." Fred or George said with a curse. "I'm telling you, it's Campbell's fault."

"No arguments there - she's good." George or Fred agreed. "But we're better."

"Little brother interrogation time!" Both suddenly cried, then dissolved into laughter.

"Think he's a poofter?"

"That's what you're going with?"

"He spends more time with Harry and Neville."

"They ain't poofters. Ginny's sure."

"Riiight. As if she doesn't hang around that Astoria bird."

"Ginny's fancied Harry since time immemorial."

"Oooh, big word! Taking after Perce, are we?"

"Shut up. We still got a bloke to find."

"Been searching for ages. The Map must be wrong."

"Blasphemy!"

"We searched Perce. Nothing. We searched Ron. Nothing."

"The Map ain't wrong. We'll find the Pettigrew bloke yet."

'I solemnly swear I am up to no good.' One or the other of the Twins said, rapping his wand against a large piece of parchment they were holding between them, yellowed with age. Letters and lines vanished, and soon enough it was blank. The two Gryffindors left to prepare for a confrontation with the three boys and three girls that had claimed the abandoned classroom for their own - the one that would certainly come once the breached defenses were discovered. Convinced -and rather disappointed- that the room was empty, they spared it not another look.

A fat, balding rat got with difficulty out of one of the larger gaps between stones in the wall, sniffing carefully and swinging beady eyes and large ears left and right, making sure it, he, was alone. Having convinced himself of the safety of doing so, Peter Pettigrew returned to his still ratlike human form and wringed his hands. He had to flee. They were looking for him and they had the Map! Unfortunately, there were still complications with that course of action.

Peter lifted a limp, greasy lock of hair before his eyes, trying to see how pink it was in the near-darkness. His skin had slowly returned to its original color after considerable effort and countless vials of potions prepared by his new best friends but his hair absolutely refused to show any progress whatsoever. Not even copious amounts of hair-care potions had changed that. It might not be much of a problem in his human form as there were countless ways to hide or get rid of one's hair, but as a rat he was covered in fur... which remained too distinctively pink for him to hide with rumors of Ron Weasley's pink rat having spread through Hogwarts and beyond over the past few years.

Other problems still remained, the greatest of which were the desiccated, hairless, eyeless horrors stalking the corridors of Hogwarts. Inferi could see without eyes, sense the living with more than the five basic senses, were much tougher and stronger than any living being their size, never tired, could not disobey orders, and did not stop fighting until literally torn apart. Peter was as certain as could be that several such nightmares were still around, helpless rats captured, slain, and defiled by the Dark Lord's pet Dark witch to serve as spies within the castle. Unfortunately, he would never know whether one or more were watching until far too late, for their creator had taken to Disillusioning and Silencing them and somehow enabling them to walk up sheer walls or ceilings.

Fear gnawed upon Peter's guts, far more than it usually did. His worst nightmare no longer was the Dark Lord returning to power, finding out Peter had not gone to help him, and torturing him to death for his failure. No it was that crazy bitch Lestrange capturing him, forcing him to change into his animagus form, then turning him into yet another Inferius for unknowingly sending the Dark Lord to his doom against Potter... and somehow managing to bind his very self to the animated rat corpse - for ever.

No, no! Peter could not wait for his new friends to find a way to help him. With a heavy heart, he decided to flee the castle.


	70. Of maps and traitors

**Caught the flu during the weekend. Updates will be slower and author notes shorter until I either recover or the pepper-up potion becomes available.**

 **lightning king: Too bad that what Rowling says about love outside the books, and what the books' events show do not match, eh?**

 **The Viking Stranger: There are bigger problems than just Pettigrew, though.**

 **whatweareafreaidof: Tom was his own worst enemy because he never really failed in anything he tried before Harry came around. Never learned to handle failure and thus put all his troubles up to the prophesy during the second war. At least in canon - things might turn out a little different in this story.**

 **Tomon: just because someone captures a rat inferius doesn't mean they know who made it. Pretty hard to prove who the caster was after enough other spells are cast for Priori Incantantem to no longer work, especially if the caster has an age-related alibi. How many people would believe a third-year capable of even minor necromancy?**

 **Disclaimer: Did Harry name his son after Severus Snape despite Snape never regretting the death of James Potter or the other Maurauders? If yes, Harry Potter does not belong to me. It belongs to JK Rowling and whoever she sold the rights to.**

 **...**

"You and your stupid Slytherin plots!" Ron shouted, making Harry glad they'd recast the silencing charms on the walls and door. "Let's capture a Death Eater and keep him so he can teach us. There's no way it would go wrong." Ron mocked in a passable imitation of Valeria's voice. "And now look what's happened!"

"If memory serves Ronald, none of you argued against interrogating him!" The Slytherin witch said, though not in her usual superior tone. Her face was flushed, her hair dishevelled from having recently woken up and not wasting time to get ready, and her stance wasn't quite that of someone who knew the answers to every question or problem. Harry would have been sympathetic... if the dirty traitor responsible for his parents' murders had not just escaped.

"Come on, Val, you know more about magic than any of us." Tracey tried to lift their friends' spirits. "Any ideas on how he got out of a windowless, hidden, locked room we'd locked up with two dozen spells without a wand?" Ron looked at the mousy girl with an expression between disapproval and disgust. Harry's first friend obviously did not feel very charitable towards the blonde Slytherin at the moment, or anyone being friendly towards her. Harry shrugged when Daphne's eyes fell on him and she raised a pale eyebrow in question; it was hard to accept a blunder as big as Pettigrew's escape and while Valeria had risked her life for him more than once and helped save him from the Dursleys, she hadn't done anything like that to save or help Ron. Harry would prefer to keep his distance. If he didn't he'd only make matters worse - because he happened to agree with Ron up to a point.

"No..." Valeria said in confusion. "I mean, the detection spells showed almost no spells had been cast. Either Pettigrew knew how to cover his tracks or..." She did not say what the rest of them were already thinking; someone else could well have helped Pettigrew escape and with all the Death Eaters out there...

"Snape!" Harry said suddenly, suspicion blossoming in his mind into full-on accusation and hatred. "According to Pettigrew, he's a bloody Death Eater. I'd bet my broom on him helping his vile little friend." He finished with a growl, ready to march into the greasy git's office and curse him to oblivion.

"Let's not be hasty." Daphne interrupted. "Even if Professor Snape is a Death Eater and we could do something about it - which I doubt we can - what if Pettigrew was lying?" The regal girl looked down at Harry, putting such challenge and contempt in her expression that he was forced to pause and rethink his rash plan if only to avoid her hexing him for monumental stupidity. Odd... when had he started needing approval for his plans?

"You're just saying that because he's your Head of House!" Ron readily accused. "You can't accept you and the rest of your housemates are looking up to someone who's an evil, bigoted git!"

"Funny you should say that." Tracey said, plastering on the usual smirk in her face but with more than a bit of ugliness in her voice. "According to Pettigrew, Professor Snape was Lily Evans' best friend - until a bunch of Gryffindors that sound suspiciously similar to your twin brothers drove them apart with bullying that makes Draco Malfoy look like a saint!"

Ron didn't bother replying - he drew his wand. Tracey followed suit and when Harry made to support his best friend he found himself with Daphne's wand already pointing at his face, the girl having drawn as fast as he had. For a moment it seemed as if they'd start dueling in earnest - but then the one person who'd stayed silent so far intervened.

"Stop! Just stop!" Neville spoke up with neither anger nor accusation, just a great deal of disappointment. "We're supposed to be friends and yet you're this close-" he showed his thumb and forefinger almost touching "-from throwing curses in anger. Bloody hell guys! We weren't this close to fighting openly in our first year, and we've been through a dozen life-or-death situations together since then! What happened to Gryffindor chivalry and Slytherin fraternity?" The sometimes timid boy shook his head in exasperation. "Hell, what happened to common sense? If we start fighting now, we're never going to recapture that Death Eater!"

"What do you suggest, Longbottom?" Daphne said a bit coldly. "Accusations were thrown against our Head of House, the only teacher that supports Slytherins when the rest of the faculty is against us. Even the friendly and likable Professor Lupin tends to indirectly favor the other Houses over us, even if only subconsciously. And let's not forget about Dumbledore's point awards in precisely the most unfair and demeaning way for us Slytherins."

"Umm, Daphne?" Valeria said weakly. "Professor Snape is a Death Eater."

"Of course he was a Death Eater!" The pureblood princess said in exasperation. "He was acquitted in court by evidence provided by the high and mighty Albus Dumbledore, though." She frowned at everyone else's surprised expressions. "Oh come on! It's in the Wizengamot records. You at least should have known about it, Longbottom, Weasley!"

"I think Dumbledore was mistaken." Valeria said solemnly, her once strong support of her Head of House having been turned on its head. When had this happened, Harry wondered? "Some things... they leave a mark upon oneself and if willingly done... a court's decision can't overturn them - not even a court presided on by Albus Dumbledore."

"What do you mean?" Neville asked, frowning. He wanted all his friends together again, not fighting among themselves. "Professor Snape's a bit scary-" Ron and Tracey snorted "-but evil? Dumbledore wouldn't have allowed him to teach if he was still a Death Eater."

Valeria sighed, and drew her wand. Pointing it at Ron, she wiggled it in a complex figure vaguely reminiscent of a keyhole and commanded emphatically.

 _"Aperio Maleficarum!"_

"Was that supposed to do something?" Ron asked curiously, because nothing seemed to have changed. The Slytherin witch did not reply. She pointed her wand towards Daphne, and repeated the process.

 _"Aperio Maleficarum!"_

Daphne's form seemed to blur imperceptibly, the colors of both her green robes and her face and hair now muted, and tiny puffs of black smoke seemed to revolve around her. Valeria turned her wand upon herself, casting the spell for the third time.

 _"Aperio Maleficarum!"_

Valeria's shadow seemed to grow in vast proportions, appearing to swallow much of the light in the room. The girl's form remained perfectly clear, except for her eyes; those flickered for a moment into a sinister, angry red but on a second glance looked normal, as if had only been a trick of the light. Valeria turned her wand upon Harry.

 _"Aperio Maleficarum!"_

Harry's scar turned pitch-black. Like a dark sun, it seemed to radiate ebony rays of darkness, and like a bottomless, malevolent, nearly-sentient pit, it seemed to draw in and distort Harry's entire form, as if the Gryffindor boy was a photograph flexing under enormous pressure applied to that very spot... or as if from some horrendous parasite hitchhiking upon his soul.

"What the bloody hell was that?" Ron all but shouted, obviously shaken by the brief visions.

"A spell to reveal Dark Magic." Valeria said mirthlessly. "Or rather, one that reveals the impact and nature of such magic upon one's essence of self."

"But..." Daphne considered that for a moment, then stared at her friend with new eyes. "There is no such spell that I know of." She said.

"There is now." The other blonde countered, though with not nearly as much interest in the implications. "The point is, I checked both Pettigrew and Snape with it without them knowing; the spell only shares the vision with whoever the caster wants. Our esteemed Head of House has a Dark Mark like the rat's, and his essence is damaged similarly to but less than the rat's. However, there's at least one murder or something like it in his past, and one he feels no remorse for."

"Could you explain to the rest of the class what you mean?" Harry said with some annoyance. "Essence of self? Damage? What does that mean?"

"The essence of self is commonly called the soul, Harry." Valeria said, rolling her eyes. "The permanent record of who you are, in a way. Actions horrible enough to be against what being human means can damage it. Kill someone, especially willingly and for your benefit, and it literally damages your humanity."

"And Professor Snape is...?" Tracey asked, not finishing her thought.

"Damaged. Possibly a mudrerer, though that was unclear" Valeria confirmed. "Until we know what he did, I suggest we don't trust him."

"Great, another problem." Neville said. "Can we at least agree not to fight among ourselves until the crisis is over?"

"Naah. I don't think I can forgive the snake." Ron said in all seriousness. "At least not till after we feed that pedophile to Miss Norris. Do we get to dodge the soul-damage if someone else does the killing for us?"

"This is hardly a laughing matter, Weasley." Daphne said, staring daggers at the redhead. "Do try to think up something useful for a change, will you? Not that you'll ever come up with a good idea."

"Hey, I have plenty of good ideas!" Ron protested. "We could ask Fred and George for help. Bet they know all the hiding places the rat could have used!"

"Of course they do!" Valeria said excitedly, as if suddenly having realized something. "And if I'm right, I'm going to give them a good spanking after taking their most valued possession!"

"Hey, what did my brothers do to you?" Ron said with a scowl.

"You mean besides feeding me a love potion and pranking all of us?" The blonde girl crossed her arms in a threatening manner. "Doesn't it seem strange to you that all our precautions were taken down with very little magic cast? Who do we know that uses potions and enchanted items instead of spells for most of their tricks?"

 **...**

Peter Pettigrew was both scared and angry, and had good reasons to be.

The secret passages out of the castle had all been magically sealed. Not to prevent them being opened though, oh no. The enchantments were meant to capture anyone passing through and alert their caster. He'd been lucky to notice the spells; few people who had not spent over a decade in as magical a place as Hogwarts with nothing to do every day but watch and gather information would have. Even if he were to risk being found out to sneak into a first-year dormitory and steal a wand, the spellwork to counter them would have been beyond him. There was no question who'd put up those enchantments; they were the work of the cowardly, self-pitying, but brilliant accomplice to Black and Potter; Remus Lupin. Only the werewolf knew of all the extra passages and was both good enough in Charms to cast them and had a reason to do it.

Peter's second problem were the enhanced defenses upon Hogwarts. Erected by the tiny Charms Master in Dumbledore's absence, they wouldn't allow unauthorized entry or exit, even if someone could bypass the Dementors. And with the fiends patroling the perimeter every hundred yards or so, that was unlikely - unless you were as foolhardy and stupidly brave as the Black heir.

But there were always solutions. Peter was very, very good at hiding and in recent years he'd learned of some good places to hide in that even the Maurauders had never discovered. Hogwarts' plumbing was more than large enough to accomodate a rat, and after a couple expeditions into the Kitchens he'd managed to grab enough supplies for months. Now, all he had to do was wait. Unless they could use the pipes as well, none but Potter could get to him here. And even if Potter weren't one of his good friends, he would never think to check in the Chamber of Secrets.

 **...**

"Come on, luv. Can we not talk about this?" Fred tried his best charming voice on the tall, platinum-haired girl. The only response he got for his troubles was a smirk, immediately followed by a stinging curse. Dangling upside-down while the remaining little miscreants went through his and George's things, aided and abetted by his little brother no less, just added insult to injury.

"Just tell them where it is." Neville said in exasperation, not joining his firends' heavy-handed actions but not defending the Twins either. "Ron's miffed you never shared the secret with him, Harry needs to recover family property, Val's upset enough to curse you on principle, and Daphne and Tracey are itching to dish out some payback for all the pranks you've played on Slytherins in the past five years."

"I get it, mate. I really do." George tried to placate Ron, who had only now stopped shouting in his face. "But don't you think it'd help if you told us what you were looking for? Just saying." The five people who had been searching through the Twins' stash of illicit items in one of the defunct broom closets on the seventh floor immediately stopped what they'd been doing to stare at the hovering, upside-down figures of the Twins with wide eyes. Neville just snorted in amusement.

"OK, this is ridiculous." Valeria said, drawing her wand. "We've wasted enough time as it is."

 _"Accio Marauder's Map!"_

The Twins' eyes became wide as saucers at that, though it might have been from all the blood rushing into their heads thanks to their awkward position. For a few seconds nothing happened, but then an old, multiply folded piece of yellowed parchment flew into the small room and landed at the Slytherin witch's feet.

"Excellent." The girl said, unfolding the parchment and tapping it with her wand over the Twins' protests. "I solemnly swear I am up to no good." A spiderweb of dark ink spread from where her wand had touched the parchment, growing into a highly detailed map of Hogwarts within seconds. "Yes, everything seems to be in order. It shows people, even ghosts, as advertised, as well as most of the castle's secrets." She smiled at Harry, passing the map over to him. "You know, the mapmakers must have had impressive skills in Enchantment to have made such an artifact in their fifth year." She said, and Harry nodded, his eyes gleaming with unshed tears. Neville couldn't blame him; he was holding a piece of his father's legacy, one of his greatest achievements. Neville would have done almost anything to be able to do the same.

"This is out map!" Fred and George said in unison, struggling against the spells holding them in earnest now.

"No, it isn't." Daphne said darkly. "Not after your actions led to the escape of someone who betrayed the Maurauders."

"What?" The Twins said, gobsmacked. It was probably the first time a girl's words had had such an effect on them, Neville considered.

"How do you think we knew about the Map?" Daphne said smugly. "We'd captured the person responsible for the Maurauders breaking up, but _someone_ managed to break the traitor out."

"You mean..." Fred and George paled at the accusation. "We... we didn't know! We'd been trying to find this Pettigrew bloke for ages!"

"Hold on!" Ron said, face alarmingly red. "You gits knew some bloke followed me around at night, in our _dormitories_ , and you said nothing?"

"What could we possibly have said?" The twin on the right asked.

"Professor, Professor, there's an invisible bloke in ickle Ronnie's bed?" The other twin snarked.

"We searched for him, many times. Only thing in your bed was Scabbers." They both said, then looked at each other in renewed horror.

"Yeah, the traitor has been masquerading as a rat for ages." Tracey finished for them in a cruel smile. "How many times did he sleep in your brothers' beds? How long had he been spying on your family? How many of your secrets you spoke aloud with him around?" Tracey paused for a moment for effect before going for the kill - rather cruelly, in Neville's opinion. "How often did he spy on your female relatives in the bathroom?"

"Pettigrew's not on the map!" Harry spoke up before the argument could explode into something worse.

"He can't have left." Valeria countered. "All the new security measures aside, the tracking charms still had him inside Hogwarts' walls as of fifteen minutes ago."

"Why don't we summon him?" Ron suggested, having considered all their options.

"You can't summon, banish, or levitate a person." Valeria reminded the Gryffindor redhead. "Not one without clothes anyway - remember the Inferi?"

"Yeah... but you can summon that choker you put on him, right?"

"We could, but we won't." Valeria said, shaking her head.

"Why are you shooting down all my ideas?" Ron complained, going red again. "It's as if you don't want to capture that vile rat."

"I don't want to kill him." The Slytherin girl countered. "Suspending someone from their neck alone is the definition of hanging. I'd prefer to avoid Azkaban, thank you very much."

"Are you guys and gals sure you're not married?" The Twin on the left asked.

"Yeah, you argue enough to be." The other Twin said.

"Don't worry though. Your secret's safe with us." Both said in unison as three boys went all red in the face, while three girls glared at them.

"Now why you don't let us down..."

"...so we can help catch the traitor?"

With a flick of Daphne's and Harry's wands, Fred and George abruptly fell, narrowly avoiding landing on their heads. They should have seen that coming, Neville thought.

 **...**

"You're bloody lazy." The girl on the bed accused once more, grinding away at his patience. "It's been weeks and you've barely gotten out of this dismal hovel."

"Security is way up!" He told her. "You can't expect me to charge in where I'll surely get caught, do you?"

"That's exactly what I expect you to do." She snarked. "You'll be captured, ruthlessly interrogated, and then your captors will come get me out of here." She glared at him fiercely. "Do you realize neither of us have had a bath for over three months?"

 _"Aguamenti!"_

Sirius held up the torrent of conjured, surprisingly cool water over Jones' shrieks and protests. It wasn't as if she could do anything to retaliate, tied up to the bed and wandless. Hmmm... there was an idea...

"I am going to castrate you, Sirius Black!" She shrieked once her request for a bath had been fulfilled. "You hear me? Lock you in your doggie form and take you to a muggle vet for it!"

"Hey, that's way below the belt." Sirius mock-complained with a smirk on his face. "After all, I only gave you a bath as you wanted."

"As I wanted?" She growled, doing nothing to dissuade Sirius from further pranks. "When I get out of here, I'm going to have your hide." She glared at him challengingly. "Now go out and find me something to eat."

"As you command, mistress." He said, trying not to laugh out loud. "Do you want some clothes to go with that food?"

"What?" The question had thrown her - excellent.

"There's a reason people still bathe despite the invention of scouring and cleaning charms, you know." He said, giving her a meaningful stare. "Being cleaned twice daily for three months... let's just say your robes are becoming rather threadbare. Interesting reaction with the water, too."

Sirius Black left the Shrieking Shack that night whistling a jaunty tune for the first time in twelve years.


	71. Projects

**Again, sorry for the delay everyone. I am just now recovering from a serious case of the flu.**

 **Urazz: Daphne was taught how to duel by her father. She knows and has used quite a few dark spells, some of which are potentially lethal. Thus the slightly smudged aura. As for the others noticing the darkness on Valeria and Harry, they are more worried about the Rat at the moment.**

 **Serpentine13: Yes, Aperio Maleficarum is Val's first invented spell. There are spells that do similar things already - Dumbledore even used one with a graphic visual representation of the nature of Harry's scar and state of soul once - but Val did not know them. So she had to improvise.**

 **lightning king: On the contrary, people who feel remorse and hurt after killing are less damaged by it, even recovering from the damage in time. Those who murder remorselessly are those who tear their soul apart because killing without remorse is inhuman. As for self-defense and similar cases, remember that wizards are not muggles. They can stop an attacker in countless ways, from knocking them out to transfiguring them to a newt. Wizards can also survive extremely nasty wounds that could have killed muggles many times over, which covers accidental or collateral damage. Thus, when a wizard kills another wizard they're doing so deliberately and because killing is more convenient than the alternative. I'm not following Rowlings' "killing is always wrong" view in real life; I'm just saying that in the fantasy world she made it is considerably worse because viable alternatives exist.**

 **Tomon: Yeah, Daphne is beginning to like Harry. She still doesn't think much of his intelligence though.**

 **JohnyS: Val is willing to use any kind of magic, but is quite careful about not harming herself. Compared to a third-year Riddle, she's less capable in Dueling and Transfiguration, but his better in Charms and the less direct Dark Arts. She doesn't have his offensive abilities in the Mind Arts and thus the uncanny skill to turn almost everyone to his advantage, but is better in Runes and anything requiring crafting and preparation. The time-turner and tendency to work hard have afforded her more time to study on her own whereas Riddle could pick ideas out of people's heads. In short, they're good in different areas.**

 **Thanks to everyone else who reviewed to say how much they liked this story.**

 **Disclaimer: Did Harry ever open his book on Magical Theory in the books to learn why magic worked in addition to how each spell was cast? If not, Harry Potter does not belong to me and this story is totally nonprofit. JK Rowling gets all profits, ever.**

 **...**

"By now, you should all be aware of what Ancient Runes are and aren't." The aging Professor Babbling was saying but Harry was not paying much attention. Like his other friends, his mind was on a certain rat and their inability to find him despite several weeks' worth of efforts.

"With the Easter holidays approaching, it is time we tested your understanding of how Runes are a language rather than a series of wand gestures." The Runes Mistress gestured at the blackboard with her wand and a series of a dozen or so runic sequences appeared on it. "With only minor exceptions, you've yet to try your hand in creating a runic sequence of any magical significance. That is because at your level, the effort, attention, and intent required to produce anything beyond mundane text would take considerably longer than any one of our lessons. The holidays however should be a long enough period for you to manage a small runic enchantment. So pick any one of the subjects provided and see what you can do to develop it."

Reluctantly, Harry turned his attention to the lesson at hand. Ancient Runes seemed largely boring - he'd never much liked foreign languages - and not much like magic at all. The idea that he had to painstakingly inscribe runic characters over a period of days to achieve anything did not appeal to him either. He dutifully copied the series of symbols upon the blackboard, deciding to translate them in his own time rather than trust his entire project to a rushed attempt in the ten minutes left till the end of the class, and started packing his things. How had Valeria convinced him to try one of the hardest and less gratifying courses Hogwarts had to offer? Harry blamed his own gullibility and the single impressive display of runic magic he'd been shown at the beginning of the year. If something didn't change soon, he wasn't sure he'd continue with this course for much longer.

"A sickle for your thoughts, Harry." Speak of the Devil, and she'll appear.

"Only a sickle?" He asked. Unlike him, the blonde Slytherin witch was far more excited about their new project. Then again, Valeria had always been a bit odd, and far too enamored of the esoteric and the unusual.

"They're the thoughts of a third-year Gryffindor boy, aren't they?" She teased with a smirk. "Now, if I was asking for Dumbledore's thoughts instead..." They both laughed at that. He did not resent the friendly jokes at his expense from his Slytherin companions. They were Snakes; they were bound to look down on anything Gryffindor on occasion. Even worse, they were girls. He'd overheard enough discussions between Lavender and Parvati to have a good idea of how they thought about him and other boys his age.

"Runes are, well, boring." He said, deciding to get this over with. "It takes practically forever to use them as anything other than a language."

"That's what you're doing wrong, Harry." Valeria said in a long-suffering tone. "Runes are never used as anything other than a language."

"What about runic magic then?" He asked, confused.

"Have you been paying attention to Professor Babbling over the last few weeks?" She said, eyes narrowing in the Standard Accusatory Grimace, Grade One.

"I've been a little bit preoccupied." He shot back, scowling. "Death Eaters, traitor-rats, soul-sucking fiends, walking corpses. You know, the usual." Having packed everything, he stood up to leave. No reason to stay around if she wasn't going to help.

"Sit down!" At the abrupt command, a great weight pressed down on him. It was easier to comply than making the Slytherin girl even angrier - and with Professor Babbling still around he didn't want to make a scene. "The magic we knew and a great deal of luck were the only things keeping us alive in all the dangerous situations we've stumbled upon. Since gaining more luck is not yet within our ability, you will learn more magic if I have to shove it down your throat."

"But..."

"But nothing. For wizardkind magic is thought, Harry. Intent. And words give structure to our thoughts." She pointed at the runic sequences on the blackboard. "The acts of speaking or writing a word bring a clearer mental image of what the word represents than anything else. Repeat it enough times and eventually a simple word helps you recall very complex things in an instant - such as the face of your best friend when you hear his name, or the exact intent and magic behind a spell when you speak an incantation."

"Then why does it take forever to do the simplest runic magic?" Harry huffed. "A spell takes only a moment."

"Your first transfiguration took you hours." She explained. "In the three years since you've cast tens of thousands of spells, so your ability to focus your intent has improved tremendously. It still takes some time to cast a new spell for the first time, but not hours of effort for casting it once."

"Val, it doesn't take hours for runic magic. It takes days, even weeks." Which was what had him so disaffected with the course.

"Of course! You cast spells with a wand." She said as if it was self-evident and explained everything. It didn't. "It has a core taken from a highly magical being, treated with various alchemical solutions and magical substances, sealed into a rod of magical wood of high quality. Not only all those magical substances were expended in its making, but a great deal of work and time was put into its creation. Last but certainly not least, its creator used predictive Arithmancy to match the exact combination of substances, wand shape, and other wand traits with the personality, character, and talents of a single wizard - namely you - years or decades before they were even born." She packed her own things now with a word and a flick of her rather thick wand. "Sacrifice -equivalent exchange- is the other major element of magic, as you should well know. With so much of it put into making wands, it's only natural for spells to be much easier to cast with one."

"An excellent analysis, Miss Campbell." Professor Babbling said while the rest of the class watched. Apparently, they'd been loud enough to attract her attention. "That is why wand-casting has become the primary magical tradition. Unfortunately, most young witches and wizards remember its advantages while conveniently forgetting its drawbacks."

"What would those be, Professor?" Ron asked, having stayed out of the argument so far.

"That it will only do magic limited to brief bursts of energy, Mister Weasley." The Professor looked happy to explain. "Take the most common alternative magic as an example. Potions can produce highly complex and long-lasting effects that cannot be adapted to wand-based spells. The same applies to the properties of many magical plants and creatures, revealing the future through Divination or Arithmancy, and generally anything that is too complex or powerful to do with a wand."

"There's magic too powerful to do with a wand?" Justin Finch-Fletchley questioned, frowning.

"Of course Mister Finch-Fletchley." Professor Babbling's tone was so similar to Valeria's when the latter was revealing so-called 'simple truths' that Harry did a double-take to confirm the speaker's identity. "Some powerful artifacts can't be created with wand magic, and neither can familial enchantments or generational curses. The more powerful effects of some obscure branches of magic are beyond wands as well. Naturally, reversing such magic can't be done with a wand either - which is why Lycanthropy still exists for example."

Half an hour later, Harry was returning to Gryffindor tower with his interest in Ancient Runes renewed. It had not been the Professor's explanations that had done it, or not just them. He touched his famous scar as he often did when thinking about Voldemort. He'd often thought of it as a lightning bolt, as did most anyone he'd ever heard describing it. But was it really a lightning bolt or Sowilo, the ancient rune of the Sun, and triumph over others?

 **...**

"Good morning, class!" Charity Burbage greeted them with her usual enthusiasm. "It's been a good six months since the beginning of our time together, so most of you should have your projects ready, or nearing completion. Before Christmas break I'd asked you to investigate an invention of your choice unique and important to the muggle world, and bring your findings to class along with practical examples." Many of the purebloods in the class groaned, while their halfblood and muggleborn classmates smirked knowingly. Daphne only frowned; propagating such divisions was bad for more than just school and house unity. What was their Professor thinking? "So let's see how well you understood the concepts you've been researching - Miss Moon?"

Lillian Moon was one of the quieter and girlier Slytherins - and one of the most dangerous, in Daphne's opinion. Stealthy, diplomatic, very capable in remaining unnoticed until it was time to act. At times Daphne wondered how her time in Hogwarts would have been if she'd befriended the quiet and reserved pureblood girl instead of the flashiest, boldest muggleborn Hogwarts had seen in centuries. She would even have someone to talk about cosmetics, clothing, or boys with that knew all the pureblood customs and a great deal beyond them. Case in point, Moon's project was about synthetic fibers.

"The muggle population is enormous." The olive-skinned, curvy brunette was saying. "They already have problems feeding themselves in many countries; without using their version of Alchemy to produce unnatural fibers, clothing would have been an issue as well." Professor Babbling was not amused at such an introduction, but couldn't do much about it. Moon had done her research and as long as what she said was the truth, she was free to present facts however she wanted. It was a method politicians and reporters everywhere had been developing for generations. "Synthetic fibers became prevalent during their side of Grindelwald's war. Due to a major shortage of Asian silk, hemp, and cotton, Allied muggle alchemists were pressed to provide a replacement. They combined a simple organic base with an organic acid to create a sort-of organic salt, then heated it to five hundred and fifty degrees until it reacted and formed Nylon and water. This Nylon was a very long chain of simple organic elements that could be turned into a very efficient and durable fiber." Moon was taking out several articles of clothing out of her bag, all of them obviously muggle, and most of them alien to Daphne - and probably most of the class. "During the War, muggles used this new fiber to produce parachutes..." She lifted a strange contraption that looked like an enormous bag folded down to be manageable, with a series of strings attached to it at one end, ending up on a complicated harness at the other. "...pieces of cloth that enabled muggle soldiers to jump off planes at the height of thousands of feet and then land without killing themselves."

"That's insane!" Theodore said.

"Thank you for the interruption, Mister Nott." Charity Burbage said in a very Snape-like manner. "Five points from Slytherin."

"That is why it worked." Moon nodded knowlingly. "At the time, jumping off from thousands of feet in the air was so unusual than many muggle forces didn't have defenses against it. A small enemy army could descend on their position from above suspended on these parachutes, and take them by surprise. It wasn't the only use for the new synthetic fibers though. Vehicle tires, tents, ropes, dresses; by the time the War ended, synthetic fibers had taken up a quarter of the market." She showed a muggle dress to the class. "Such fibers are stronger than natural ones, and more easy to work with. This allowed muggles, despite their lack of enchanted cloth, to produce dresses and undergarments _almost_ as elaborate, colorful, and thin as our own magically competent tailors - and at far lower prices, allowing even the poor access to the new designs." Moon smirked. "Unfortunately for them, synthetic fibers have drawbacks. Some can be easily destroyed if not washed or ironed very carefully, others are too hot or too cold for the season. And all of them are uncomforable to the touch to lesser or greater extent, because they are unnatural."

"Thank you, Miss Moon." Professor Burbage said with a scowl. "Let's see some other projects. How about you, Mister Nott?"

Theodore's project was more theoretical than Lillian's. He'd elected to show examples of muggle medicine, especially their work with diseases, and obviously couldn't actually use them practically in class. Vaccines - the idea that someone was intentionally exposed to a disease in order to become immune - didn't go over well with most of the class. Daphne shuddered at the idea; she'd take the simple healing potions over them any day. The fact that muggles were trying their hand at creating and using diseases as weapons gathered far more interest. Witches and wizards had no fear of any mundane disease when simple potions would cure even the most persistent strains, but several purebloods could easily imagine using magically-created or assisted plagues to eradicate one's enemies. It had been done centuries in the past with the Black Death after all.

"Thank you, Mister Nott." Burbage said with a sigh. "Miss Greengrass?"

"My project is about fuel and the steam engine." Daphne readily said. "Since muggles don't have magic, they need another source of power to work any project beyond what just their muscles can accomplish. In the past, they harnessed wind and water to do anything from grind up wheat to weave fabric faster than normally possible. But since the Statute of Secrecy was signed, things have been changing." She took out the miniature boiler and turbine she'd spent weeks trying to find in specialty muggle shops and months to understand how it worked, filled it with water from a pitcher, and poured oil into the sand-filled receptacle beneath it. Then with a match, she lit it. "Wood has stored energy in it. That is how it can sustain a fire. So do other organic substances such as coal, or oil. A little over two hundred years ago, muggles learned how to harness the heat from a fire to produce movement." Daphne was cheating a bit, mainly for the purpose of making her presentation brief; the pitcher she'd used had warming charms on it, keeping the water at just below its boiling point. It only took about a minute for steam to start building up in the miniature boiler, and for the turbine to start turning. "The muggles used heat to boil water, the produced steam creating effectively an artificial current at the boiler's output point. Instead of having to build windmills or waterwheels in places where strong winds or running water already existed, they could now build turbines anywhere they had a boiler and a fire. Other methods of harnessing fuel also appeared, such as engines that could work off pressure, not just an open current. With the ability to turn the stored energy of various fuels - wood, coal, and oil among them - into work, the muggles built trains, ships, and other forms of transport - even machines that could fly. They designed machines that could do heavy labor for them - such as pumping water, working the fields, or even mining." Daphne met Professor Burbage's widening smile with a frown. "They might not have magic, but they'd found another means to get power. Cruder and cumbersome perhaps, but even unwieldy power can get the job done if you have enough of it."

"Excellent work, miss Greengrass." Their Professor said, then turned her gaze towards the muggleborns in the class. Perhaps she was trying to finish the lesson with something suitably impressive? If so, she made a rather big mistake in Daphne's opinion. "How about you, Miss Campbell?"

"This is a bullet." Valeria said, holding up a tapered brass cylinder as thick as her thumb and about four inches long. "Since time immemorial, Muggles have fought each other through a really simple mechanism; picking up something heavy and sharp and throwing it at each other." Several students laughed at that. "For over twenty thousand years, this hasn't changed; from stones, to spears, to arrows, to bullets, muggle weapons work in pretty much the same way. Only their relative power has changed." She drew her wand and cast an Enlargement Charm on the bullet so everyone could see the details better. "Bullets are nothing more than a simple brass cylinder open on one end, with a sharp and pointy piece of metal going out of it, and some explosive mixture filling the space between. When a muggle gun fires, it ignites the explosive mixture, the containing cylinder and the gun's own barrel allow the explosion to propagate only forward, and the pointy metal projectile is hurled at great speeds towards whatever the muggle is pointing his gun at." With another tap, she returned the bullet to its original size. "This particular bullet is a bit under four inches long, exactly half an inch wide, and weighs seven hundred grains. Tiny and not very dangerous-looking, isn't it?" The class laughed again. "When fired from the weapon it was designed for, it travels at roughly three thousand feet per second - literally too fast to see - and it outpaces the sound of the weapon firing; if it hits, the target is dead before he realizes what happened. It hits with power similar to a moderate piercing hex, capable of piercing an inch-thick steel plate, and the most distant recorded kill in wartime was one muggle killing another in the Vietnam war at a distance of about one and a half miles."

Suddenly, there was much less laughter from the purebloods in class. The short blonde muggleborn smirked, and opened her magically extended purse. First, she took out a short metal tripod and deployed it. Then, what looked like a four-foot metal cylinder with one end thicker and blocky and ending up to a twin handle and a couple of levers. After attaching that to the tripod -it took her several attempts due to her obvious inexperience- she retrieved a long belt with dozens of identical bullets strapped on it. That she attached to an opening at the side of the blocky end of the metal tube.

"Say hello to the M2 Browning, the most famous muggle gun of the last seventy years. It has been used in nearly two dozen wars and countless regional skirmishes because, against muggles at least, it is both cheap and effective. Over three million copies of it have been built and some twenty million people have died to it in the past seven decades." Daphne facepalmed even as Professor Burbage gaped in horror. Of course Valeria would bring a lethal weapon to class. "Don't worry." The insufferably confident brat said. "This weapon might be fully functional but even a basic Shield Charm can protect you from its shots. If you go around with such a charm up all the time, that is, since if a muggle tries to kill you with it they will be both too far for you to see and their attack will be too fast for you to react. Not to mention that it can fire upwards of four hundred bullets per minute. A wizard could defend himself from one muggle with this weapon with some effort. But against half a dozen? The average wizard might not fare as well, and wizards tend to be outnumbered a thousand to one worldwide."

The lesson devolved into a frantic and very loud argument on muggle weaponry after that, and all due to some well-chosen comments that maximized the perceived threat while neglecting to mention its limitations. Amusing or not Daphne was going to kill Valeria, figuratively speaking. One did not fuel panic and paranoia in one's own House without destroying everyone's sleep schedule, and Daphne had not carefully pampered and cultivated her own looks to see them ruined to Pansy's or Lillian's retaliation.


	72. Divisions

**Hey everyone! There are only five more chapters left in the first part of the story and I'm already working on the second. Yes, "The Brightest Witch and the Darkest House" is coming to an end but don't worry. Its sequel, "The Hogwarts Six and the Darkest Wizard", is in the works and the first chapter will be posted in the first week of December. I've decided to split the story in three parts in total because its size and number of chapters would soon become unwieldy if it kept growing. The first part which you've already read is Val's arrival to Hogwarts, and how her existence changes the plot up to PoA. The second part will be the new group of six friends having to deal with Voldemort's return and all that follows. The third part will be the epic open war against Voldemort's forces and the changes Wizarding Britain undergoes.**

 **Urazz: We'll be seeing other PoVs more often in the future. I'd like to experiment with focusing a bit more on Harry, especially in the second part of the story. Val was trying to mess up with Burbage by introducing guns and muggle violence. Older purebloods are somewhat aware of muggle weapons, including nukes, due to Grindelwald's involvement with Hitler. The younger generation has forgotten due to the fifty years of peace but that doesn't mean the wizarding world has no defenses. For one thing, the energy delivered by even a nuke to a man-sized target is no higher than a conventional bomb. The _Confringo Curse_ can blow up holes into streets comparable to such bombs, and is blockable. For another, there are spells and items that provide warning of imminent danger and Apparition can move a wizard a thousand miles out of the danger area. A prepared wizard has nothing to fear from muggle weapons - but far too few wizards are prepared or even willing to make such preparations.  
**

 **Tomon: In reality, the magic is one and the same. The difference comes in what focus witches and wizards use to channel it. They can use just about anything, though given foci are ebst suited to given types of effects. Wand foci were invented to make it faster and easier and are best for that kind of spells. Runes were made as a generic focus that would apply to anything. Rituals are custom-made to focus a single powerful magical effect each. And so on and so forth.**

 **Inoeth: Owen Campbell is not exactly a law-abiding individual. Consider that he and Val's mother met on the job, and that she's a diplomat, and you get the idea. As for smuggling a gun, undetectably extended purses work. Who would ever consider that a girl could have a heavy machinegun in her pocket?**

 **Bearmauls: .50 cal antimateriel rounds can go through thin walls and sever limbs with a lucky hit. Using a HMG in an enclosed space is a bad idea.**

 **SinghSong: Everyone makes mistakes. There are far easier ways to get rid of muggles than using their own weapons against them though. Put muggle-repelling charms on London and see eight million muggles forced to become refugees. Put muggle-repelling charms around London instead and see eight million muggles die of starvation since food supplies won't get in and they can't get out. A hundred Death Eaters working unopposed could depopulate Great Britain in a month.**

 **Simianpower: Tracey is a halfblood. Her pureblood family doesn't exactly respect or care much for her. Valeria can be bitchy, yes, and sees Ron as worse than he really is. And yeah, this is a no-Hermione story; she's been replaced.**

 **...**

"Bella, be serious! This is insane."

He'd not worked closely with the most violent dark witch in the Dark Lord's ranks over the past war, but Selwyn was beginning to realize just why anyone thought her mad. Not only was her proposed plan all but suicidal, but her recent actions might get them all captured.

"I can't be my baby cousin, Selwyn, I'm a girl." The madwoman cackled. "Now, what exactly has your knickers in a twist?"

"This!" Selwyn pointed at the tiny redhead carving runes on a stolen cadaver with a shaky hand a few dozen yards from them. The child had been remarkably attentive and cooperative over the past few months; torture often had that result. He did not fear what the underage mudblood could do, of course. The girl's presence was danger enough. "Whatever else she might be, the girl is being tracked by the Trace. Any magic we do around her is registered and located - that's exactly why wizarding criminals hardly ever go after children! How long before Hopkirk notices and has the Improper Use of Magic Office call the Aurors down on our heads?"

"Oh please! Do you think I'm an idiot?" Selwyn thought it expedient not to answer that question. Especially with the idiotic Lestrange brothers paying attention to the argument. The two of them were one of two reasons he'd not openly challenged Bellatrix's authority before. Of below-average intelligence, the two were brutal and competent duelists, and completely devoted to his insane rival. Not because one of them was married to her of course; they just followed the strongest and most brutal witch or wizard around. "I personally cast the Unplottable Charm that covers us, Selwyn. If our location cannot be mapped or written down, no detection spells will guide the Aurors to us - and the Trace is no exception." She waved one of the wands they'd been provided in a complicated pattern that looked suspiciously like a pointless, meaningless tangle and went on. "Now, what is the real reason for our little disagreement?"

"What do you..." he started but was immediately interrupted harshly.

"Do you take me for a fool?" She hissed, her demeanor shifting entirely between one sentence and the next. Well, she was insane, wasn't she? "You never lacked ambition, always reaching above your station. It was one of the reasons the Dark Lord did not entrust you with anything really important. If you plan to turn against me, do keep in mind one little fact." She laughed now. "Many a useful ritual could be done with a pureblood wizard's sacrifice."

"We should be trying to find who freed us and join them, not gallivating around the country!" Selwyn hissed back, more than a little disturbed at the laughingly delivered death threat. "The Ministry is licking its wounds now and Dumbledore is dealing with his own problems. Now is the best time to reach out to our old contacts!"

"The Dark Lord left us a mission, fool." She said, contempt and fanaticism mixing in her tone, eyes wild and wide as saucers. "We will slay those the Ministry and Dumbledore claim destroyed him, so he can return in all his glory amid wailing and lamentations and such an atmosphere of terror that has not been seen since the rise of Grindelwald! It will be glorious!"

Selwyn left her to her delusions, doing his best to look as if he was grudgingly following that demented vision. He'd been a fool to try with words; arguing with fanatics got you nowhere. And if anyone had doubts about Bellatrix's insanity, her claims about the mudblood child's identity and her interations with the brat would be enough to change their minds. After all, he'd personally helped put an end to the Prewett line. No, there was only one thing left to do if words would not work.

What was one more murder in the grand scheme of things?

 **...**

In Professor Dumbledore's absence, the student population had become agitated and fearful. The atmosphere in Hogwarts was now almost as tense as it had been during the Chamber of Secrets fiasco, even though no student had been sent to the Hospital wing for more than a week. Harry couldn't blame the other students; they'd not been exposed to nearly as many horrors as he had and found it hard to cope with all the dangers, real or imagined.

Harry's closest friends were not much better, if for different reasons. The search for Wormtail was not going well. They'd searched practically everywhere - even much of the plumbing, if Valeria's magically controlled rats were to be trusted - but there was no sign of him. Not on the Maurauders' Map, not on the detection spells they'd been casting in every nook and cranny, not from the snakes they'd conjured so Harry could have them act as spies and guards in places no human could enter. Half of the Easter holidays they'd spent searching, and found nothing.

The other half, Harry and his friends had spent studying for the swiftly approaching exams. Even Ron was determined to do well, and as long as Harry or Ron's little sister Ginny remembered to bring a bag full of food to their every study session, his determination held. They might not be up to to their female friends' reading speeds - especially Daphne's or Valeria's, who could devour an entire textbook in under a day - but Harry, Ron, and Neville had still gone through more gravestone-sized tomes over the past month than they had the previous year.

Sighing and rubbing his aching eyes, Harry shoved _Numerology and Grammatica_ aside. The largest, most incomprehensible book he'd ever read had so far defeated all his attempts at understanding it, and he was too tired to keep trying that night.

"That's it!" Ron said, throwing his own copy across the table with a heavy thud. "If I read one more line of Runes tonight I'll either turn my brain into mush, or wake up tommorow and find a foot of my height has somehow been transferred into hair length, my pyzamas have turned green and silver, and my poor red hair turned to blond."

"Don't forget the secondary changes." Ginny added from her own corner of the table sotto voce, cupping both hands before her chest. "Seriously Ron, why did you and Harry sign up for Ancient Runes if you hate them so much?"

"We were conscripted." Harry answered for his friend as he ensured his inkwell was securely sealed. Messing up several parchments' worth of finished assignments only days before they had to be handed in had featered prominently in his nightmares lately, even displacing the bleached, skull-shaped masks of nameless Death Eaters. Which only served to prove just how unfairly numerous Easter homework assignments tended to be.

"Really?" Ginny asked, tilting her head cutely. "It had nothing to do with a hundred-galleon bet then?"

"Not really..." Ron said unconvincingly, gathering up his own books and parchments.

"Huh." His little sister said with a smirk. "How about being asked to sign up by a girl, then?" Both Harry and Ron went crimson then, though Ron's blush was far more impressive. Ginny laughed nastily, proving beyond doubt which gender was the cruelest by far.

"Take a page from Neville's book, you two." She suggested, pointing at the comfy armchair by the fireplace where the boy in question had been sitting on with a book at hand for the past several hours. "He has just as much to read and write as you two but do you see him whining?"

"Oi!" Ron exclaimed indignantly, jumping off his seat. "Harry mate, d'you know somewhere we could hole up that girls can't reach? I've had enough of their hounding us - how about you?"

"Hmm..." Harry thought about it for a moment, ignoring Ginny's glower. What was it with girls and their need to 'advise', 'help', or 'guide' him, Neville, and Ron? It had started with one annoyingly clever blonde during their very first ride on the Hogwarts Express. Then her friends had been added to the group of those willing to mother the three Gryffindor boys. And now Ron's little sister was doing the same? "We can hide in the Chamber of Secrets. Slytherin's monster remained concealed there for a thousand years despite the efforts of all the Headmasters of Hogwarts, ever. We'll be safe there from the girls till the end of the year, I reckon... probably."

"The Chamber!" Ron jumped up excitedly, staring at him with wide eyes. "What if that's where he's hiding?"

"Who?" Harry said distractedly, more worried about the looks Ginny was giving them than Ron's sudden epiphany.

"You know who!" Ron said meaningfully.

"WHAT!" Ginny screeched, drawing reproachful stares from all the other people trying to study in the Gryffindor common room.

"Not that You-Know-Who, the other one." Ron said a bit lamely, but Harry understood and jumped up as well, revision plans forgotten.

"Let me get the Map and the Twins." He whispered hurriedly, throwing everything haphazardly into his bag. "You contact the girls."

"Why do I have to contact the girls?" Ron whined but Harry paid him no attention. If they were right, his life was about to change forever.

 **...**

"How'd you get a rat to obey you like that?" One or the other of the Weasley twins asked Valeria with interest after they had all gathered in Moaning Myrtle's ever-flooded bathroom.

"Never you mind that now." She said, strapping the miniature harness onto the undead rat's head. Not that everyone else knew about the undead part; as long as they didn't show too much interest the Notice-Me-Not Charm would conceal the little details that revealed the little rodent was an animated corpse rather than a living, if magically controlled, animal. "Neville, the mirrors please."

The Gryffindor boy shuffled away from the very interested ghost of Myrtle and handed over a pair of medium-size handheld mirrors to her. Pouting petulantly, Myrtle turned towards Harry instead, and Neville sighed in relief. Valeria checked the two mirrors over for a couple of minutes, nodded to herself, then cast the key spell to her plan.

 _"Reducio!"_

One of the mirrors shrunk to about the size of her thumbnail and with a basic Sticking Charm she affixed it to the small harness on the rat inferius' head. Then, she activated the communication enchantment between the pair of magically linked mirrors and started giving commands to the rat inferius. It followed them perfectly; not only were her commands carried to her minion through the mirror, but she could now see as it did; success! Full necromancers must have other, more advanced means to directly control their troops at a distance, but she'd barely begun delving into the mysteries of that particular Dark Art; reanimating rats was about the limit of what she could do for the moment, which meant resorting to improvised remote-control at best. On the other hand, the link worked and it would through any distance even through as comprehensive protective enchantments as Hogwarts' own defenses so she had no room to complain.

"That's cool." Harry said and she smiled at his compliment. "Could we do it with a snake too? I mean..." he cringed a bit "We might need my Parseltongue to capture Wormtail, dark ability or no." If only he knew, Valeria thought with amusement. Then again, she'd never understood how wizards could almost arbitrarily declare parts of magic as "dark" and refuse to use them. It probably came down to prejudice and cultural taboos, probably.

"Don't worry, Harry." Daphne said in an attempt to calm him. "None of us have a problem with you being a Parselmouth." The tall girl stared at the rest of them almost challengingly and everyone nodded in agreement... though the Twins smirked as soon as the platinum-haired Slytherin was no longer looking at them. Oh well. It was Daphne's fault for not being more careful, wasn't it?

"You sure know what you're doing, mate?" Ron said, more than a little bit worried. Out of them all, he was the least happy with the plan they'd come up with and its limitations.

"Don't worry. I am." Harry said with conviction as he looked down at the shortest member of their little group, then at the once again open entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. "Just make sure to follow quickly after me in case Wormtail does something we do not expect."

"Don't worry Harry, we will." Valeria assured him and six other people nodded their agreement. A few last minor adjustments later, it was time. "Rat in the hole!" She said, the now Disillusioned rat inferius jumping into the massive pipe and sliding down towards the one place in the entire school they'd yet to search for the traitor.

 **...**

Pettigrew woke up in his usual place atop the Basilisk's massive corpse, his intuitive sense of danger warning him something was not right. Honed over more than two decades of Maurauder escapades, spying, and hiding himself under the nose of one of the most powerful wizards in the world, his gut instincts had become an almost infallible nose for trouble, especially once the extra senses of his rat form were added into the mix.

The huge mass of the Basilisk was still largely intact. The ancient magic that coursed through it had ensured rot had still to set in, and even after its softer, less magical tissues would wither away in the years to come, its bones, skin, teeth, and venom would remain. For now, its eerie aura kept other vermin away from Pettigrew's sleeping arrangements, its mass kept him well above the mud and stagnant water soaking the floor, and its skin was softe, drier, and warmer than anywhere else in the Chamber. It made for an obvious, very prominent place for one to be however, if someone looking for them was already inside the Chamber.

Fortunately, Pettigrew's senses were vastly augmented in his animagus form. He might not see very well, but he could hear and smell as well as a dog, his whiskers could detect the slightest vibration, and his intuition and animal instincts were even stronger. And the cloying, sickly stench of rotting meat he was detecting was not native to the Chamber, not by a long shot. Jumping off the Basilisk's corpse, he made a run for one of the pipes leading to the nearest exit. Unfortunately, he didn't make it. All but imperceptible tremors coursed through the ground, up his tiny legs and to his whiskers from something other than Pettigrew himself, something as fast and small as he. A split second later, something entirely silent and near-invisible slammed into him, something four-legged, hairless, cold, and foul. Pettigrew rolled and grappled with one of his worst nightmares, not needing his eyes and ears to know he was under attack by the still-walking corpse of a rat under the control of a probably-insane dark witch or wizard.

Kicking, rolling, biting, slamming, jumping madly all over the place, Pettigrew already knew the battle had been lost. He might be a great deal smarter than the simply-programmed, mindless corpse and possibly a bit more agile, but it was incredibly strong and tough for its size, could feel no pain, would not get tired, and would keep coming until it was literally hacked into pieces. Desperation and terror won over caution as the nightmare's teeth found purchase onto Pettigrew's tail, and bit through it with absurd ease. Screeching painfully, Pettigrew returned to his human form to avoid being violently eviscerated.

 _POP!_

Kicking the unseen horror away with one bloody foot, he turned around at the unmistakable sound of Apparition. What the hell? Nobody could Apparate in and out of Hogwarts, especially as heavily defended an area as the Chamber of Secrets. So how did the two newcomers arr... no! A house elf! And Merlin's saggy balls, that was impossible! He was dead! His master had personally seen to it!

 _"Stupefy!"_

Darkness took Peter Pettigrew, his tired, terrified, traumatized mind still grappling with the impossibility of a still-living James Potter. The furious son of his dead former friend stared down at him with loathing and disgust, hitting him with a couple more Stunners for good measure. James Potter might be well and truly gone, only his image living in the face of his son, but the traitor was far from safe. Two other Maurauders were still alive, and Harry and his friends knew all about them.


	73. My use and value, unto you

**Bearmauls: she specifically didn't want to present the gun as safe and controllable so she could better display the violent nature of muggles and annoy Burbage.**

 **Urazz: they can feed Pettigrew more potion. It would just take bigger, more expensive doses, eventually making it either too costly for them or too poisonous for the traitor, unless they periodically healed him or helped the potion along with other compulsions. OTOH, they didn't want to risk losing him again. For muggle-repelling charms, remember that they can affect the senses too. Pretty hard to live or move around in a city if you can't see where you're going because the buildings and streets all look like identical ruins or are outright invisible. As for witch hunts, they'd be as pointless in a modern setting as in the middle ages. Diagon Alley is a mile-long area in the middle of London that muggles don't know of. Not through aerial photos, not from it physically interrupting the city's road grid, plumbing, or infrastructure, not from it pushing aside buildings that, from the muggles' point of view should be adjacent. The Hogwarts Express line is a six-hundred-mile train track that does the same to the entire country, and it still isn't noticed. Wizardkind can literally fold space and use it as a security measure; if a bunch of Death Eaters have a single secure location they can Apparate in and out of it for hit-and-run bombings and never be found. Even worse, a sufficiently powerful wizard can point his wand at a steel statue and say "Portus". A split second later, a superstrong assassin invulnerable to firearms is in your parliament, killing your government.**

 **Riniko22: You'll find out. Sirius at least is bound to check.**

 **The Viking Stranger: not yet.**

 **a1993: According to my notes on future scenes, the trilogy will easily hit a million words. I had to divide it to make it manageable.**

 **Serene Blue: Val will be in the majority of the scenes in all books. I'm doing some PoV changes because some people asked me to show what Neville/Tracey/Ron/Daphne were thinking a bit more, but that doesn't mean Harry and Val won't be around. As for pairings, what hints? There's only one pair brewing at the moment.**

 **LorindolTinuviel: Probably because I'm new in FanFiction and my biggest story focuses on an original character. Compared to most other OC-focused stories, mine gets its fair share of attention. It's even reaching 500 reviews and follows.**

 **Disclaimer: Did Remus Lupin fail to see the temporally duplicated Hermione and Harry on the Maurauder's Map? If yes, Harry Potter does not belong to me. It belongs to JK Rowling and this story is entirely nonprofit.**

 **...**

Merlin, the most famous wizard ever in both the wizarding and muggle worlds, was often said to have lived backwards. No version of the legends explained that in detail though, and Valeria was beginning to realize why; the writers wanted to preserve their readers' sanity. Living through events shaped by the advice of your future self in order to reach specific points in time to send said advice in the first place was an exercise in precision. Already well beyond the safety net of the stabilizing charms on her time-turner, a single misstep could unravel cause-and-effect for months in the past and lead to major paradox. She'd already decided not to repeat such an attempt at shaping her own past, no matter what advantages it brought. Even people with over a century of experience had no business playing with godlike power - just look at Dumbledore's plots - and she was not yet fourteen.

"We're not taking the rat to the Ministry!" Harry argued at a dull roar. "Fudge is in Malfoy's pocket and half the Wizengamot have Death Eaters in their families!"

"Be reasonable, mate. We can't be sure the rat didn't trick us." Ron said, trying to calm his friend down. "If... if Sirius Black is truly innocent we got to tell someone, and not simply go out on our own to find him. That'd be nuts."

"Oh please Professor McGonagal, you and every other adult are wrong about Sirius Black but we totally know better. Look, we even found proof through totally legitimate means that won't be inadmissible or get us expelled because we broke every school rule ever to obtain it, honest!" Tracey mocked with her usual gusto in a high-pitched, overly-girlish rendition of Harry's voice before continuing in her standard caustic tone. "This is like the Philosopher's Stone fiasco all over again, down to Dumbledore being away at the Ministry."

"No it's not." Daphne argued. "The Dark Lord only had one servant at large then, not ten. And there weren't any Dementors around either." The willowy, platinum-haired witch glared at Harry and Valeria accusingly, arms crossed. "Unless you can convince me this is not one of your suicidally asinine plots, we are not going anywhere." Out of all of them, the Greengrass heiress was the most coldly logical, most pessimistic, and most likely to put her foot down on anything remotely approaching fun. She'd even insisted on calling Tom Riddle the "Dark Lord", refusing to acknowledge Valeria's inspired onomatopoieia christening him the "Dark Wanker". Oh well.. friends did not have to be carbon-copy reflections of each other to be true, did they?

Valeria sighed, staring at the dismally muddy and gloomy vastness of the Chamber of Secrets. The Basilisk's corpse was not the most comforting reminder of their, and especially Harry's, achievements and eventually the residual magic would fade from its flesh, letting rot creep in. Until then it would resist most magical manipulation, including cleaning charms. The rest of the massive subterranean space was not much better; copious amounts of mud, slime, and lichen coated just about anything, gleaming in the greenish glow of everburning torches. She suspected those sources of illumination were a form of Gubraithian Fire; since Riddle was gone from the Chamber and neither Harry nor she had cast them, they must have been created decades, even centuries ago.

Neville walked into Valeria's view, staring at everything in awe, from the Basilisk's corpse, to the statue of Slytherin, to the cracks and craters around where Harry, Riddle, Fawkes, and the Basilisk had fought. The reserved Gryffindor boy did not like arguing with his friends and rarely spoke up when the rest of them had differences of opinion, but had stopped fights among their group more than once, showing surprising wisdom and courage in the process. Valeria was about to ask for his opinion on the rat, when she noticed the last member of their little group looking down at the dirty stone floor fornlornly.

"Hey Dobby." She greeted, squatting down after casting a cleaning charm, and negating the awkward height difference between her and the elf. Having grown up being the shortest girl of her year in muggle school, she knew how height was associated with authority and precedence - stupidly, in her opinion.

"Miss Valley greets Dobby!" He squealed, his long ears flapping excitedly. "Dobby knew Miss Valley was a great and scary witch, but he didn't know of her kindness. Dobby should have, yes, Miss Valley being the Great Harry Potter's friend..."

"You don't miss much, do you Dobby?" She was certain the House Elves rarely missed what mischief the students got up to, especially those personally involved in their plots. Which begged the question why no House Elf had warned the faculty about Riddle's Diary possessing people, or Eekins Rookwood cursing them, or all the bullying going on between or even within the Houses. "You know," she whispered to Dobby conspiratorially "now that Harry gave you permission to enter the Chamber, you could come here as often as you wanted. Clean it up a bit, fix a bit of the damage... Harry and the rest of us get into so much trouble and adventures that a secret lair would be nice."

"Miss Valley really means it?" Dobby asked, eyes growing wide as saucers - even more so than they already were, that is.

"Of course I do." Valeria snorted. "Ever heard about butlers, Dobby? They are a kind of high-end domestic workers in the muggle world. They often run the estates of the very rich or very powerful and are paid handsomely for it. The best butlers are trusted with the masters' house security, transportation, preparing their personal meals, and schedules." The elf was gaping at her now so she gave him an encouraging smile. "Most wizards simply don't understand what elves could do for them, but none of us are like that, least of all Harry. How could we? We've seen you perform some rather impressive magic, and that kind of help could be invaluable."

"What does Miss Valley need of Dobby?" The elf said, obviously ready to bring it at once. "More rats? Bad potions from bad street? Snakes for the Great Harry Potter?"

"Not at the moment, no." She shook her head fondly. More rat inferi wouldn't help now, and she didn't want to send Dobby to Knockturn Alley on his own. She considered everything she and her friends needed to do for a moment, and made her decision. "Bring me my trunk, Dobby. A half-dozen bats too, if you can catch them. And we'll need you to transport us around the castle a few times over the day, OK?"

"Dobby can do, Miss!" He replied and with a loud 'POP' of Disapparition he was gone.

"Have you reached a decision yet?" She asked her friends, turning her attention back to the argument.

"Yes." Daphne said with satisfaction. "We decided on a way to secure the rat, prevent him from ever escaping again."

"Really?" She asked with interest, looking down at the stunned form of the balding, rat-faced, middle-aged prisoner.

"Oh, yeah." Ron nodded as enthusiastically as Dobby had, and with almost as much ear flapping too. "Should have thought of it ages ago."

"Indeed." Daphne sneered in an almost Snape-ish manner, pointing her wand at the traitor.

 _Ossio Dispersimus! Ossio Dispersimus! Ossio Dispersimus! Ossio Dispersimus!_

"See?" Ron said gleefully. "He can't go anywhere or use a wand with his hand and feet deboned, and healing that would require days and a lot of Skele-Gro. Not having fun now, are you you rat-faced creep?" He asked, kicking the unconscious man and sending his now rubbery extremities flopping like Dobby's ears. "Best spell Lockhart ever taught us."

"Great!" Valeria said, kicking herself mentally for not thinking of that solution much earlier. The traitor would have never escaped them like that.

"Where did you send Dobby?" Harry asked, noting the elf's absence for the first time.

"To prepare for our clearing Sirius Black's name." Valeria answered, ignoring Daphne's piercing stare. "I have a great plan, but it has a minor problem."

"That's a shock." Daphne said almost as snarkily as Tracey.

"What is it?" Neville spoke up for the first time.

"You have to trust me to cast some spells on you." She explained. "And I can't tell you why."

 **...**

"Problems, Lupin?" Severus Snape said, barging into his office without knocking with a steaming mug in hand.

"You could say that." Remus Lupin had been attempting to replicate a certain feat of enchantment he and his onetime friends had managed in their fifth year, but over a decade of living the dismal lot of a werewolf had not exactly been good for either his skills or his confidence. His cooperation with his onetime sworn enemy -very grudging on Severus Snape's part- was the only thing that might protect the school if he failed. That wasn't good for his confidence either.

"Hmf. Had you spent more of your school years practicing and studying instead of going into rampages with the rest of the zoo maybe you'd have succeeded by now." Snape snorted, his demeanor showing exactly how much faith he put in Lupin's skills. "In any case, it's too late now."

"Right." Remus sighed, dropping the large parchment full of black lines and incomprehensible scrawls he'd been working on. "I suppose it's your turn standing guard?"

"It's always my turn standing guard, Lupin." Severus Snape drawled. "Take it from someone who's lived it; it doesn't pay to be the most skilled and trusted confidante of any major authority figure. It really shortens your life expectancy."

"Oh dear, the world must be coming to an end; Severus Snape is cracking jokes!" Right next to bragging about his skills and rubbing it in his face. It was as if the last fifteen years were gone and they were back in school, the two smartest boys in their class, from rival Houses, and bearing a deadly grudge.

"I am not cracking jokes, you demented furball!" The man once named Snivellus by his rivals complained childishly. "I am only-"

Remus Lupin never did learn what Snape was about to say because at that exact moment the alarm spells woven into Hogwarts' secret passages over the past months went off.

"Stay here!" Snape commanded sharply. "This is the night of the full Moon and we don't know how long this will take."

"What if you need backup?" Lupin asked, reaching for his wand with shaking, too-pale hands.

"I won't." The greasy-haired man said in a tone that implied Lupin was a total idiot. "Both the animagus and the Dark Mark alarm were tripped once, so it's only Black. I can handle him, as you should certainly remember."

Lupin didn't know about that, but there was nothing he could do. Snape left to deal with the traitor while he made preparations to confine himself in his office for the night. When he turned back to his desk however, he found something he did not expect. It took him only about a minute to evaluate the new information and reach a decision.

Dread rising, all plans of spending a quiet night as a wolf with a man's mind were thrown out.

 **...**

 _"Rennervate! Rennervate! Rennervate! Rennervate! Rennervate!"_

"Bloody hell, Val!" Ron Weasley shouted out from the depths of Valeria's trunk. "You put us all in here?"

"You're dead." Daphne growled, pushing Harry off her, the Gryffindor boy blushing. "You hear me, Campbell? Dead, quartered, stewed, and fed to one of Hagrid's pets!"

"I don't know why you're complaining, Daphne." Tracey snuggled between a mortified Neville and a maroon-faced Ron. "This is rather nice."

"Don't complain, guys and gals." Valeria told them, levitating them out of the magically expanded interior of her most expensive possession. "Packing you like that might have been mildly uncomfortable for some of you, but essential in taking you with me. Besides, you were stunned. It's not as if you felt much of anything."

"Unfortunately." Tracey quipped and giggled. Ron made a noise like a stepped-on cat and jumped out before Valeria could levitate him in turn.

"This better be a perfect, well-thought-out, foolproof plan, Campbell." Daphne threatened as she stretched to ensure full mobility in any imminent duels, to the boys further mortification. "Not one of your usual stunts. Where are we and how long has it been? The last thing I remember is you stunning us in the Chamber."

"We're in the Astronomy tower and I can't tell you." She said, handing out pieces of parchment full of instuctions. "Study these carefully and follow every step. We can't leave anything up to chance."

"What do you mean you can't tell us?" Harry spoke up while making sure his emergency kit had everything. "We already trusted you to stun us and look how we ended up! You owe us, Val!"

"Yes, I do. I still can't tell you though." She cast a new Shield Charm on herself, wore her dragonhide gloves to ensure most enemy magic would not affect her hands - disarming included, and started on the magical disguise. "And I can't tell you why I can't tell you either."

"Oh come on!" Ron huffed. "This is ridiculous!"

"What part of 'I can't tell you' didn't you get?" She retorted as she finished with the last essential spell. "Now, we have a window of exactly two hours and thirty-seven minutes to bring the trunk to Sirius Black, talk with him, and arrange to either clear his name or his escape. During that time, we can't call Dobby or contact anyone else. Do you understand?" She didn't say anything about coming back to the castle. She already knew they wouldn't be making it back in time thanks to... circumstances beyond their control.

"Not really." Harrry frowned. "Why do we have to bring your trunk to my godfather?"

"Because the rat is in compartment number four, just like you were in number five. I didn't think it prudent to lug an unconscious Death Eater around through Hogwarts." She said more than a bit testily. Too many Reversals, too many hours without sleep. She'd manage... somehow.

"What about the Dementors?" Daphne challenged, staring at the dozens of black-robed forms hovering around the castle grounds in the distance.

"The dementors won't be bothering us for at least..." she checked her watch "another two hours and thirty-four minutes. Stop wasting our window of opportunity and decide right now; are we going or not?"

A few years ago, Owen Campbell had been accosted by a rather insistent missionary in one of the family's trips abroad. Valeria had been with her father back then and even as an eight year old she had no trouble seeing just how annoying the strange man was being. Thus she'd engaged him in conversation about his beliefs. One of her more annoying questions had been about free will. How could people have it, if their actions could be perfectly prediced by a higher power? Five years later the shoe was in the other foot, and it chafed. Valeria was no higher power, but she'd already seen her friends' decision in her study of the Maurauders' Map, much as she had studied the positions of the Dementors via observation and ensured there'd be no interference by anyone for a given period, then rewound with her Time Turner while carrying the trunk with her friends and Pettigrew inside. She did not know how it would all end, the window was too small for that, but she'd forced predestination on herself and others to ensure their safety for a time. Did free will really exist or not?

"OK, let's do it." Harry said, so apparently not. "What's the next step after these instructions?"

"A little bit of faith, banking on a great deal of preparation and magic." She said with a tired smile.

And with that, she picked up the trunk full of traitor and jumped off the Astronomy tower.


	74. Unexpected Arrivals

**a1993/The Viking Stranger: Cliffjumper rather than cliffhanger. Val's plots are exercises in calculated craziness, and one of the biggest reasons she isn't in Gryffindor. She plans ahead and she's arrogant enough to believe she's (almost) always right, rather than being brave, the one trait she shares with Malfoy. The other reason she's not a Gryffindor is that she's entirely honorless and anti-chivalrous, of course.**

 **Bearmauls/Tomon/Urazz: The Time-Turners have issues, as Val has already discovered. The biggest of them being that they only appear to be self-consistent. The predestination issue will be resolved in chapter 77, the final for this first book in the series.**

 **Urazz: Tracey has always been an all-around miscreant. Daphne, like many purebloods, has been introduced to certain adult issues from a very early age. Remember that a good many Blacks, for example, had children at a younger age than she is now. Of course, the Greengrass princess sees her friends as immature, so she keeps things to herself. For the wizard vs muggle debate, assume someone like Voldemort disapparates to and Fiendfyres one target per 3 minutes - an easy pace they can keep up without exhausting themselves. In about a day, the US would be 100 power plants, 50 fuel depots, 50 harbors, 50 airports, and 50 government/social power centers down, a million people will be dead, three hundred million people will be without power or fuel, 90% of the country's trade and industry would be gutted and it would take a decade's effort to recover from the damage. That's from the efforts of one great wizard, for one day, before the muggles can even realize what's going on.**

 **Serelena: The clever disclaimer tradition I first saw used by Silently Watches, the author of the Black Queen series. His disclaimers are better than mine and his series is awesome too.**

 **MrRoberts III: Smart, dangerous enemies will be part of my stories. So will mistakes, on both sides.**

 **...**

Falling from the top of the Astronomy tower, the star-strewn sky glittering behind him, the ground approaching at a frenetic pace before him, is not quite as exhilarating as flying... if only because it doesn't last nearly as long. Before the count of six, Harry slams to the ground at nearly a hundred miles per hour... and comes to a dead stop in an impact only slightly more jarring than a hard Quidditch landing thanks to his Featherweight Charm.

He and Ron handle it well enough, and Daphne is impeccably graceful as always, but the others are not so fortunate. Tracey falls flat with a loud "OW" and both Valeria and Neville tumble several times before they come to a stop. Incredibly, the blonde Slytherin girl seems to be even worse off than the tall Gryffindor boy, nursing quite a few scrapes.

"Let's not do this again." Tracey mumbles as Daphne pulls her to her feet with an amused smirk, helping the mousy brunette vanish the mud from her clothes.

"One of these days..." Valeria grumbles, leaning on her multi-compartment trunk for support "...I'll learn how to fly."

"We already know how to fly." Rons says, an annoyed expression on his face. "Wizards have been using broomsticks for a thousand years. Why did we decide to jump from the tower again?"

"Umm... because it was awesome?" Valeria covers rather unsuccessfully in Harry's opinion. If there was one thing the smartest witch in their year was not good at was flying on a broom, closely followed by actually moving while dueling. Which probably explained why she'd just taken that nasty tumble, now that Harry thought of it. "Anyway, I was talking about flying without a broom - stop laughing, Weasley!"

"If you're done bickering like first years..." Daphne interrupted,

"...or like a married couple!" Tracey added,

"We have a rat to deliver." The tall, silver-haired Slytherin said, ignoring her friend's jibe. Pointing her wand at Valeria's many scrapes in turn, she begun casting.

 _"Episkey! Episkey! Episkey! Episkey! Episkey!"_

With each spell a scrape closed up and vanished altogether, and soon their friend was fully healed. With a satisfied nod, Daphne turned to Tracey.

"You're the best with illusions; Disillusion and silence us before someone sees. Everyone else, shut up before I jinx you. This is a serious matter, not one of your little Gryffindor outings!" As Tracey blurred their forms one by one and silenced them from the neck down, Daphne pulled Harry aside.

"What's up?" Harry asked in a near-whisper, seeing the girl's harsh frown, sharp stare, and white-knuckled grip on her wand."

"I don't agree with this... this idiocy, Potter!" She hissed, obviously angry with him. "Do you even realize in how many ways we could die horribly because you decided you should meet your Godfather the convicted murderer, and Val, our resident mad genius, decided to support you?"

"He is not a murderer - he was framed!" Harry argued back. "We got the traitor, and we'll take it to him so he can clear his name." What was her problem?

"My problem Potter - and don't give me that confused expression, I can read you well enough after three years - is that you're putting up a very good display of every single flaw of the House of Lions." Harry made to interrupt but thought better of it given Daphne's glower. "You have decided to see justice done because you want to - that's selfrighteousness. You're ignoring all the dangers in your path - foolhardiness. You won't involve any authority figures for several reasons but mostly because you think you know best - pride. And you're going to ignore my advice just because - stubborness."

"He's my Godfather, I can't leave him to the Ministry or the Dementors!" Harry almost shouted back, now angry as well. "You know how Fudge is. And do you think Lucius Malfoy won't do anything to see Pettigrew free or at least gone? Given all the rat told us about the Death Eaters I'm surprised the whole Ministry isn't in their pocket!"

"Then go to Dumbledore." The girl spat back almost contemptuously and Harry had to resist the impulse to punch that sneering face. "Honestly Potter, I thought you were intelligent."

"And I thought you were my friend!" At a certain level Harry was horrified at how quickly their argument had escalated, how easily a girl he'd thought of as someone who'd be at his side through thick and thin was willing to back out now.

"I am your friend you bloody Gryffindor; that's why I don't want you to get killed." She hissed again. "You and Campbell hanging out and sharing ideas is a nightmare. She has less self-preservation than Malfoy and that's saying something. If either of you get us killed tonight, I'm going to haunt you for all I'm worth."

"Oh." If he were honest with himself, Harry would admit that Daphne trying to protect him had never crossed his mind. That this outing would be incredibly dangerous had, but after all the adventures they'd had mortal peril did not seem as dire as it once had. Was Daphne right? Was he living up to the worst Gryffindor stereotypes? Were his other friends mad for not holding him back? Was...

"Are you guys ready?" Tracey said, interrupting his train of thought. "I'm done with the others."

As the now near-invisible brunette cast a Disillusionment Charm on him, Harry began to have doubts about the entire adventure.

 **...**

"Clean up the firepits, vanish the garbage, and unravel all the enchantments except for the Unplottable Charm." Selwyn ordered the other four Death Eaters that had remained with him. "That one we leave to fade on its own long after we've left." The others did not say a word, clearing their camp in silence after the brief power struggle that had divided their little group. That bitch! Selwyn kicked a stone out of his path in frustration and rage, ignoring the sharp pain in his foot that indicated a good bruise come tomorrow. How could she possibly do this to him!

Selwyn's bid for leadership of their little group had not gone well. Logical arguments had persuaded several others but Bellatrix's fanaticism had ensured they would not act against her even if they would not follow in what he'd persuaded them was a useless, suicidal mission. Attacking Hogwarts? Even without Albus Dumbledore there, the Professors were more than a match for them combined, before one even counted the NEWT-level students that might join any battle out of necessity, or the Aurors that would surely be called as soon as a message could be sent. But mad Bella had insisted their master would reward them for killing the Boy-Who-Lived, and Dolohov and the Lestrange brothers had sided with her. Instead of resolving things in a duel, Bella had declared all cowards would see the truth when she returned victorious, and left along with her dedicated minions. Selwyn was somewhat relieved at that outcome; he and Bella both knew he could not take her in a duel, so why had she not killed him on the spot? Another sign of her madness, he supposed.

The others were finishing preparations for their departure when Selwyn stumbled into one of the muggle corpses they'd been turning into inferi, now abandoned that the element of surprise provided by fire-resistant undead no longer applied. So many hours of work wasted in a plan that had ultimately not worked, even if it had given the Ministry an enormous bloody nose. Like all of Bellatrix's plans, it had been brilliant and inspired, but also far too bold and insane to work. Selwyn would have the last laugh though; Bella, Dolohov, and the Lestrange brothers would die in a foolish attack while he led the Dark Lord's only remaining servants in a quest to find him as they should have done mothns ago.

"Leave for the rendevous point." He told the others, trying not to gag at the stench of decaying muggle that filled the air.

"What of the others?" Travers asked, ever the dutiful follower and perfect muscle but not very bright.

"They'll follow after they get back." He said, not believing it for a moment. They would all leave Bellatrix's mad fanaticism behind them; no reason to leave the Lestrange fools that worshipped her or Dolohov who was as mindlessly brutal as her any directions to find.

Speaking of leaving Selwyn eyed the crudely dug, dark, dismal cave before him with a very nasty smile that did not reach his cruel eyes. There was one loose end left to tidy up, one last opportunity to give that crazy bitch the finger in the very unlikely event of her survival. Fingering his wand and thinking fondly of the nastiest lethal curses, the soon-to-be leader of the remaining Death Eaters entered the cave where the last few corpses and one soon-to-be corpse were stored.

"Come out, girl. We're leaving." He commanded harshly but received no reply from the darkness. The little brat Bella had taken a shine to was often too scared or too apathetic to respond to the rest of them, her mind almost certainly broken by the horrors she'd witnessed. Soft 'POPs' of Disapparition could be heard from outside, the others leaving already.

"Come out! Now!" Selwyn took a few steps deeper into the cave, stumbling on a corpse and cursing the need for discretion. Magical illumination could be seen from a great distance in the falling night and he didn't want to try his luck only moments before his... promotion. Unfortunately for Selwyn, that would be the next to last mistake he ever made. Suddenly, someone grabbed his wand arm at the wrist and squeezed with incredible force; before he even registered what was happening, the Inferius had already crushed his arm in its inhumanly strong grip, bones crumbling like so much chalk.

"I'm out, Uncle Selly." The tiny, pale, and probably sickly eleven-year-old said as she crawled out of the deepest part of the cave she'd been hiding in. Her clothes were in tatters, her eyes too large, her skin paper-white from severe blood loss... how many rituals had Bellatrix used her in? Selwyn couldn't remember, his thoughts a jumbled mess as that incredibly strong grip still sent agony coursing through his limb.

"You have been bad, Uncle Selly." The girl said, echoing Bellatrix's voice and tone at the height of madness. "Aunt Bella told me so." He tried to struggle, but it was useless. The wand had fallen off his now useless fingers and he was in too much of a shock to struggle physically. Not that it would have helped against an Inferius.

"She also told me I needed protection from bad men, so she gave me a gift." To Selwyn's growing horror, more of the corpses stirred to a mockery of life, crawling closer rather than walking due to their controller's inexperience. The girl picked up the fallen wand and pouted at him. Her eyes remained dead, expressionless.

"Aunt Bella taught me what to do to bad men." The girl said tonelessly, walking out of the cave. Selwyn never followed.

 **...**

Hestia Jones found her thoughts drifting towards a certain tall, black-haired, silver-eyed convict once more as she lay in the dusty bed, tied up with a thin yet unbreakable piece of rope. The worn, creaking wooden walls of a long-abandoned, shoddily-constructed but heavily enchanted cabin surrounded her, claw marks from some dreadful dark creature hinting at the place's past that Sirius Black refused to share, the darkness hiding her shame.

The Hit-Wizard trainee had heard of what muggles called the Stockholm Syndrome, the tendency of kidnapping victims to eventually sympathize with their abductors, but had never thought she'd experience it herself. Over the weeks Sirius Black had turned from an unrepentant, violent murderer, monstrous Death Eater and despicable traitor, into a far more human figure capable of humor, sarcasm, relatively peaceful coexistence, even kindness. And from a faceless, inhuman dark wizard, into a man with reasonable (if secretive) goals of his own, considerable intelligence, and a rather cute... face. Was this change in attitude an involuntary, illogical process, a side-effect of the empathy all decent people possessed, or a real understanding of her apparently unwilling captor? Hestia hoped for the latter. She liked to believe she was a better judge of character than her more outgoing, jaded, and superficial sister anyway. Besides, Sirius had actually taken care of her when it had been against his best interests and rather tedious to boot; neither of the Jones sisters had ever been low maintenance, as their mother had always liked to complain.

The pounding of feet through the lower level of the Shrieking Shack interrupted Hestia's contemplation of Sirius Black rather abruptly. However loud and bold he appeared to be, the Azkaban escapee was nothing if not stealthy; Hestia had never heard him come and go in his several forays beyond the dusty old cabin. Senses sharpened by her Hit-Wizard training, even if her teachers always accused her of not paying attention to them, discerned several different people approaching under magical stealth, as many as half a dozen. Like most wizards, the intruders must be relying solely on their Silencing Charms. Unfortunately for them, the old wooden planks and boards that made up the building could produce noises indirectly as uneven weights made them bend and creak, so Hestia was forewarned. Unfortunately for Hestia, she was still tied up rather securely as well as wandless. Trying to appear smaller and more pitiful than she already was, the Hit-Wizard trainee rolled up the graying, threadbare bedsheets around her, hiding her limbs and stance. If the intruders made the mistake to get too close, as Death Eaters were arrogant enough to, maybe she'd have a chance... if a very, very small one.

Several Disillusioned people came up the stairs, nothing but blurs against the darkness. Their concealment spells were far from perfect though; Hestia could see enough of their outlines to guess position and orientation accurately, maybe even their build. Those couldn't be hardened Death Eaters or Aurors - not unless the skills of either group had diminished significantly.

"You are not Sirius Black." One of the figures at the front hissed rather harshy - and stupidly, in Hestia's opinion. At least he'd enough presence of mind to disguise his voice a bit, if not his gender. His companions must have been thinking along similar lines, because the tallest, leanest figure among them rather distinctly hit the first guy in the back of the head for his blunder.

 _"Aperio Maleficarum!"_

The shortest of the six figures had obviously cast some sort of spell, and one Hestia did not recognize. One of the things her instructor had drilled them in however had been Latin, and its use in incantations. The purpose and nature of even entirely unknown spells could be gleaned by their incantations. This one was certainly some sort of revealing charm, though whether it revealed evil intentions, evil actions, or something else she had no idea.

"Hmm, no trace of Dark Magic or its use." The short figure said, its voice disguised far better than the first guy's. "As we expected, though confirmation is nice. You don't suppose we're lucky for once and Dumbledore's involved with Black?"

"Now that mental image I didn't want." Another one of the Disillusioned figures commented rather scathingly. "Please explain to the rest of the class why you had to kill our brains?"

"That's a good question." The short figure said, ignoring the sarcastic remark. "What's a member of the Order of the Flaming Turkey doing rooming with an Azkaban escapee?"

"...What?" Hestia demands, jolted into speech. How could they possibly know... and that demeaning nickname...!

"Nevermind that now." A more impatient voice interrupts, this one clearly a young man's and somewhat familiar to Hestia. "Where's Sirius? You said..."

Hestia never discovered what the short figure had said because at that moment, a large, hairy, black blur jumped the intruders from behind.


	75. Charlie Foxtrot

**Still not quite satisfied with this scene; writing Snape is hard. With this first book coming to an end, I was trying for something both dark and plausible - tell me what you think of how well (or badly) this turned out.**

 **Riniko22: More Sirius follows.**

 **a1993: Why? Killing your would-be murderer is self-defense, even if you do it with zombies. And lots of very nasty individuals have turned children into soldiers before. It is horrible, but doesn't damage the child enough to require a mercy-killing. Not all the time anyway. A mind-healer would be good though.**

 **Urazz: Your guesses remain surprisingly accurate, as always. Harry has been affected by hanging out with Slytherins, yes. He has become more cunning but not any less reckless. You can blame Val for that - Daphne certainly will.**

 **booklover19a: The first book in the trilogy is a mystery, just like the first three books were in the original series. The second is going to be mainly adventure/romance, assuming I can manage the second component better than Rowling. The third is going to be epic action.**

 **everyone else: several questions answered in the last three chapters. The book will only have 77 chapters total so you won't have to wait much.**

 **Disclaimer: Did Remus or Sirius revive Snape so they could show Pettigrew to him and prove their point to one more witness and/or gloat? If not, I do not own Harry Potter. It belongs to JK Rowling.**

 **...**

The vast majority of wizards discounted the usefulness of an animagus form. What use was turning into an animal, they said, especially into one you had not chosen but was randomly assigned to you based on rather nebulous personality traits? That was OK, as far as Sirius Black was concerned. After all, the vast majority of wizards were idiots.

He was still sneaking around Hogsmeade as Padfoot, dodging Dementor patrols and stealing food from various establishments their owners had not thought to protect against animal intrusion, when he heard several people arriving at the Shrieking Shack. Having spent more than most animagi in his animal form and gotten thoroughly accustomed to Padfoot's vastly enhanced sense of hearing and smell, it took no effort to listen in and realize the Jones girl would be _in_ trouble for a change instead of just _being_ trouble. And Moony had always insisted listening in on girls and/or Snivellus would never be of use; showed what he knew, the unrepentant bookworm. With a mighty (and manly, if doglike) dash Padfoot was off like an arrow, arriving to the little hidehole he'd dug in the side of the secret tunnel and subsequently covered with an illusion in under twenty seconds.

Crawling into the earth and silently stalking towards the Shrieking Shack, Padfoot brought his second major sense to bear. Dry soil, stagnant water, old wood, fresh air wafting in from the hole, things that crawled sightlessly in the dark, the snacks and sweets he'd pilfered only an hour ago, and hundreds upon hundreds of other smells vied for his attention. He delved into the chaotic whirlpool of sensation with practiced ease, focusing on those scents that belonged to people alone... and missed several steps in surprise. No less than seven people had come through the tunnel, one of which Sirius Black would never forget. That seventh scent was the faintest, the most heavily concealed, but it was one he'd long hated but a burning passion, one he'd tracked once before... to his doom. The Rat was here, however he tried to hide himself; Sirius Black saw red.

If he was fast before, Padfoot now moved like the wind itself. Between one human heartbeat and the next, he was entering the Shack. In another two, he'd launched himself up the rickety stairs and slammed into the closest potential Death Eater and ally of the murderous Rat. Muggles, unlike most wizards, knew to fear wild dogs. A fifty-pound dog was a good deterrent against the average criminal, and a really angry one could potentially kill an unprepared human. That was with a common, nonmagical animal with less intelligence than a child. Whatever his teachers and family might say, Sirius Black was smarter than that. Smart enough to employ tactics an animal would never use. Smart enough to react to threats appropriately, using nonhuman reflexes and speed to their fullest. As a fifty-pound dog, Padfoot would have been terrifying... but he wasn't a fifty-pound dog. Even malnourished from a decade in Azkaban and a year on the run, he was a _hundred_ and fifty pound magical dog. Strong enough to drag a human along at a dead run, or fight a fully transformed werewolf and not get instantly slaughtered. The group of dark witches and wizards did not know what hit them.

Padfoot's first victim was thrown halfway across the room and into Hestia's bed with a dull thud; he groaned and did not get up. His second target shrieked, wand dropping off slender fingers as Padfoot bit into them. The tallest enemy tried to kick him then; big mistake. Padfoot agilely sidestepped the blow, caught his attacker's leg in his jaws and tugged sharply. The sound of bones snapping was very loud despite the rather messy and loud melee. More wands turned against him - far too slowly; he'd already pounced. This potential Death Eater however was much faster than his peers, probably an experienced dueler. While still slower than Padfoot, he managed to fall to the ground and avoid a collision that would have been followed by a potentially lethal bite to the throat. Jumping over a dangerously accurate stunner at the last second, Padfoot turned around and launched himself at the two enemies still standing. Their Disillusionment Charms did not afford them as much protection as they would have against a human without enhanced senses, but Padfoot still couldn't tell which assailant had thrown the Stunner well enough and fast enough to almost hit him. He chose the closest and shortest target, an easy victim that would not slow down his momentum... a mistake that almost ended the fight right there. His attack was cut short when he felt he'd slammed into a brick wall, an invisible magical shield around his would-be victim deflecting him. Another Stunner from the other assailant underscored his mistake, one he had to dodge not once but twice as said last attacker had it bounce off their comrade's shield towards his direction. Before he could recover his balance, the Death Eater who'd dodged his attack was back on his feet, wand out. With a roaring snarl, Padfoot prepared to make his last stand, taking as many of them with him as he could. If he could not kill the Rat, the traitor he'd cursed for so long who'd now all but fallen into his hands, killing his new mates would be his consolation prize.

That was when the door behind him slammed open with a bang, and a powerful Banishing Charm threw him across the room.

 **...**

Severus Snape cursed Potter, Potter's spawn, Black, Potter, unruly teenage dunderheads, and Potter as he exited the castle at a dead run. The one animagus detection charm he and Lupin were certain would not be tripped had been sending warnings to him for the past minute and a half. How could Black be using the Whomping Willow passage to enter Hogwarts when the other end terminated in a building Dumbledore himself had locked down completely and enchanted to resist the fury of a rampaging werewolf? He cursed himself and his lack of skill in broom flying too; why in Merlin's name had he not taken a broom with him so he could move around the castle and grounds at more than the pathetic pace of an earthbound human? At least there were no Dementors around; they were all patroling the perimeter, unwilling to enter Hogwarts after facing Dumbledore's wrath the one time they'd invaded. Not for the measly meal of one bitter, eternally unhappy, old ex-Death Eater anyway.

Throwing multiple Stunners at the Whomping Willow without pausing to aim, Snape ran to the base of the temporarily disabled floral menace and the hidden passage therein. Yes, an animagus had crossed his and Lupin's enchantments but he had not been alone, oh no. Not one, not two, but six underage witches and wizards had indeed accompanied him, and he could make a good guess as to which six. He'd hoped that part of the alarms had malfunctioned, but no; tracks of multiple different but still small sizes led into the tunnel. Cursing even more loudly, Snape Disillusioned, Shielded and Silenced himself, cast Supersensory and Warning Charms and ran after six terminally idiotic children and one very dangerous murderer.

An eternity and five minutes later, he was panting like the Hogwarts Express locomotive and jumping all but blindly into the chaotic fight that had broken out inside the Shrieking Shack. He barely had time to take in the situation or complain about his burning lungs and knees, when no less than five spells were thrown his way. The Severing Charm missed, cutting a deep gouge into the wooden planks a couple of feet from his head. The two Disarming Spells were reflected by his shield back at their casters and the Stunner was stopped... but the wildly hurled bolt of cursed fire would have cleaved him in two, shield and all, had he not dodged at the last second. As it was, it just gnawed through the wooden floor and into the Shack's foundations.

 _"Depulso! Finite Incantantem! Immobulus! Incarcerous!"_

Luckily, he still was good enough to overcome thirteen-year-olds en masse with unfocused but overpowered spells, hurling them away, stripping them of shields and those pathetic attempts at Disillusionment, and temporarily immobilizing them so he could ensane Black before he could think to return to his human form and blow them all up. Throwing a Blasting Curse in an enclosed space was right up the dog's alley.

"The next one to cast a spell I'll transfigure to a Flobberworm and use as a potion ingredient." He threatened wheezily, all that running catching up to him now that adrenaline was wearing off. "Potter, Weasley, Longbottom; a hundred points off from Gryffindor for attention-seeking heroics. Campbell, Davies, Greengrass; a hundred points off from Slytherin for monumental stupidity. Now start talking. Handing Black over to the Dementors will be the main course but having a good memory of the magnitude of your idiocy to give to Dumbledore and the Ministry will do as an appetizer. Maybe then the legend of the Boy-Who-Lived and his companions will die a well-deserved and unlamented death."

"My trunk is in that corner under Harry's invisibility cloak." One of the two ringleaders said after giving him a measuring, distrustful look. "High-end magical lock; only I can open it unless you want to blow it up. Last compartment contains a captured Death Eater." Really? She was going with that?

"Campbell I'm the Head of Slytherin, not Binns." He sneered. "Do you really think I'll fall for such a simple trick, or that you could overpower me even if I freed you from the immobilizing spell?"

"Suit yourself, Professor." She said, putting almost as much scorn in her words as he did when talking about Potter. "I just thought you'd like to see Peter Pettigrew with your own eyes."

 **...**

Bellatrix rested while she and her three loyal Death Eaters moved through the depths of the Black Lake. It would take some time still to surface within Hogwarts' defenses, totally bypassing the Dementor guard, since they'd started from the furthest shore of the lake. Besides, they were traveling in style; Bubblehead, Warming and Impervious Charms, with several Imperiused Grindylows carrying them along while they relaxed. Were they not witches and wizards? Why stoop so low as to swim physically when magic could solve the problem? She had far better uses for her time.

Selwyn's betrayal had a major negative impact on their plan. On one hand, giving him enough rope to hang himself had been the only relatively safe way to take him out without being blamed by his supporters, and initiate her new apprentice into the glorious art of murder. On the other hand, even without Dumbledore on site, blasting their way into Hogwarts, overpowering the Professors and taking out Potter and Longbottom could not be done with only four of them, even if they were the most powerful. No, taking out the Prophesy children would probably not happen that night. That however was no reason not to try; it would still be fun, no? She just needed to change a few... parameters. And her current surroundings had given her a perfect idea...

 **...**

"This is preposterous." Snape said, his disbelief still struggling with the truth right before his eyes. "The six of you uncovered a traitor that had deceived the entire magical community for over a decade?"

"With all due respect, sir," Greengrass said in a coldly polite tone "I doubt anyone actually tried very hard to uncover the truth. You know as well as I how the Ministry was and still is. And your side was blinded by politics, prejudice, and grudges."

"My 'side', Miss Greengrass?" He said rather sharply. "Perhaps you should not talk of matters you do not understand and know nothing about." Black's girlfirend - whom he had to bind and gag too after her shock wore off to avoid all the screeching - started struggling against her bonds and growling in protest. How... doglike.

"Excuse me, sir, I misspoke." The tall blonde girl said in an aristocratic drawl far more cultured than his Godson's. "I meant to say that Dumbledore's progressive agenda would be promoted by the extinction of the House of Black in the male line, the Order of the Phoenix and its allies considered anyone associated with the Dark automatically guilty unless proven otherwise, and you blamed Black - perhaps justifiably - for setting you up to be killed by werewolf only a few years before his capture." The Greengrass Scion stared at him challengingly and a light touch of Legilimency confirmed the worst. Not only had the six brats known for some time now, but they'd set up failsafes against Obliviation. Not that he'd seriously considered the possibility; erasing traumatic or highly intense experiences would damage one's mind. He was not willing to do that to his Snakes, or to break his promise to protect Lily's son.

"You do realize what kind of storm Pettigrew's reappearance is going to cause, don't you?" He asked with a sneer, wondering if he should simply make Pettigrew and Black vanish into the night. Whatever anyone knew, only proof mattered in the end... and he was still vehemently unconvinced about the dog's innocence. Hestia Jones still struggled and was still ignored by both him and the six teenagers. For all that she was a member of the Order of the Phoenix, she sorely lacked a brain behind those large, almond-shaped eyes she'd probably charmed Black with. Not that the dog would have needed much convincing.

"Maybe." Campbell said, shooting Potter a quick silencing glare when he was about to interrupt. "But sir, you could take credit for bringing in Pettigrew. Your _other_ friends would appreciate the traitor being eliminated and you would get an Order of Merlin for it."

Severus Snape was a master spy, manipulator, and duelist. His life, death, and soul depended on his observation, dissembling, and diplomatic skills; he missed neither the girl's meaning, nor her very brief glance towards his left forearm. His eyes narrowed and he reconsidered Obliviation... for a moment.

"How did you capture Pettigrew?" He finally asked, once again looking down at the pitiful excuse for humanity that lay stunned inside the girl's trunk. "And what happened to his limbs?"

"We used Mind Magic, Blood Magic, Soul Magic, and Necromancy." The girl quipped, then put her hands over her mouth. "Oh dear! Did I say that out loud? Not to worry, not to worry, it was all perfectly illegal."

"We used the Maurauder's Map and a potion to make Pettigrew like us." Potter said in a long-suffering voice, as if Campbell had made that joke several times before. For a very brief moment Severus Snape sympathized with the spawn of his greatest enemy. Teenagers could be very trying, especially his Snakes. Joking about how much Dark magic you knew or had done had been an intricate game of loud boasts and subtle deception within his House even in his time. Then Snape's sanity reasserted itself and he went back to hating the brat for what he represented.

"So... you finally found all of your father's rulebreaking tools." Snape glowered. "And putting them all to the same reckless, insanely dangerous use he did the first chance you got." He sneered in disgust. "Feeding a Death Eater love potion in the presence of teenage girls... did you ever consider what could have happened? No, of course not! Rules and regulations are too much for the great Harry Potter, let alone common sense."

"We didn't..."

"Silence!" Snape bellowed. He flicked his wand twice, fixing Weasley's broken leg and Davies' bitten hand. Then he levitated the unconscious Pettigrew and bound Black. "We'll get back to the castle and get this mess sorted out. If you keep your mouths shut and don't mess anything up maybe you won't be expelled and the real guilty party will be facing the Dementor's Kiss. If anyone asks, you'd been Confunded by Black to capture Pettigrew for him."

That should cover anything illegal they did to get the Rat, Snape mused as one adult wizard, six teenagers, one bound dog, one bound and stupid bitch, one unconscious, human-shaped pile of excrement, and one trunk moved through the tunnel towards the Whompling Willow. He hated Black, had for twenty years. He really wanted to see his childhood tormentor and would-be killer dead. But that hatred paled before the loathing and rage he felt towards those responsible for Lily's death. The unwitting messenger was already suffering, by choice. The murderer would too, before the end. But all previous evidence to the contrary, Peter Pettigrew really seemed to be the last and most despicable of the three, the betrayer. Snape's knuckles were white, his wand creaking by the strength of his grip, his heart beating with the effort of not saying two simple, very old words, uttering six syllables that would appease his hunger for vengeance. The Dementors would deliver a punishment far worse than anything he could ever manage. The only thing left to do was decide whether they'd get one victim or two. Decisions, decisions...

"Why, if it isn't Severus Snape." A rather girlish voice shouted out from the darkness, shocking Snape out of his deliberations as the procession marched by the shores of the Black Lake. To his horror, he knew the speaker very well. "Out for a late night stroll as usual? Still a bat, I see..." Bellatrix Lestrange said, walking close enough to see clearly.

"And who are these with you... oh my!" The madwoman's eyes went wide, her three companions just as shocked when they spotted both Potter and Longbottom within reach. "Severus... I don't know what to say! Are... are they a gift?"

Of all the Death Eaters, they had to stumble into Bella, the Lestranges, and Dolohov; the absolutely worst of the worst. Bella had never been quite convinced of his loyalty. Of all the Dark Lord's servants she was the most perceptive, despite her near-madness. And she and her man-toys were not alone. Behind them, Merman after spear-wielding Merman walked out of the water, their eyes glassy and unseeing...


	76. The Price of Knowledge

**Only one chapter to go! Nearly 500 follows and over 500 reviews, you guys have been awesome to a new writer.**

 **everyone: Selkies, the Scottish Merpeople, are known for sometimes leaving water and searching for a mate on land. Also, they attended at least one ICW conference in the 17th century. They have the ability to shed their 'skin' and assume fully bipedal forms.**

 **Urazz: Knowing the outcome does not help you much in actually performing all the actions to reach it. Information on a piece of paper is a thin shield when the Killing Curses fly. As for the girl Bellatrix captured, she wasn't a muggleborn.**

 **Guest: The Killing Curse would need as much hatred for a 13-year-old to cast as a full Patronus needed happiness from Harry, as well as someone of comparable talent to begin with. Valeria has the latter but doesn't hate people that much, though she does have equivalent rage. Which is why she can create cursed fire and big destructive magic in general instead.**

 **randomy: exactly!**

 **Meneldur: Yes, I am trying to realistically portray our heroes as talented, but still teenagers. Snape curbstomped a seventeen-year-old Harry with absurd ease, the same Harry that could duel Death Eaters and win. Bella is at the same level, or stronger. Unless it comes down to surprise, the children are toast.**

 **Tomon: Second year, Dueling Club. Snape used a single overpowered, unaimed 'Finite Incantantem' to end every active spell cast by everyone in the Club. Yes, he is despicable character-wise. But he is also a powerful wizard. For Sirius not remembering Harry's scent, people change a bit from infancy to their teen years. Also, Dementors eat good memories. For Snape dying horribly, some things are worse than death.**

 **Disclaimer: Was Bellatrix the only Death Eater to see through Snape's charade in canon and see the Dark Lord's mistakes and she was still believed to be completely mad by the 'good guys'? If yes, Harry Potter does not belong to me; he belongs to JK Rowling.**

 **...**

"I must say, you've outdone yourself this time Snape." Bella simpered as she approached her onetime fellow Death Eater. Staring from one member of her dubious ally's entourage to the other, her smirk widened as the fulfillment of all her hopes for the night and more was at hand.

"Why, both Potter and Longbottom ripe for the slaughter, my poor deluded cousin wrapped up like a gift - yes, I did recognize you Sirius, I'm mad, not blind - and what's this?" She looked down at the unconscious, pathetic little bag of lard and bones with the bonelessly flapping limbs. "Is that Pettigrew? I like what you've done to him, for an opener. Makes it so much easier to... play with him later, does it not?" She cackled madly, keeping constant watch on Snape from the corner of her eye. It would not do to be cursed in the back at her hour of triumph after all.

"You know as well as I what the Dark Lord has decreed, Bella." Severus Snape hissed as she'd known he would. Odious little boy he'd been, crawling behind the members of her Master's inner circle, insinuating his way into their midst with significant skill... and more than a bit of grease. Far too willing in his servitude to be loyal for a man of his pride, she'd always believed, a fact proven when the Dark Lord was vanquished following leads he had provided. Not that anyone else had agreed with her in that. "The Potter brat must die at his hand alone."

"You would bring that up, wouldn't you?" She sighed, suddenly tired of this charade. The Dark Lord had thus decreed, indeed. But the Dark Lord was, she had always believed, mistaken about that. Many believed Bellatrix enamored of her Master, slavishly devoted to him beyond all others. While close to the truth, that was not entirely accurate. "As you wish, Snape."

 _'Imperio!'_

To be insane was to be unpredictable, to be unpredictable was to be dangerous. Bella was less insane than others thought, but could pretend with the best of them - and enjoyed both doing so for its own sake and reaping the benefits of destroying her enemies' expectations and plans. Case in point, turning Snape's attempts to sow dissention between her and her allies for his own benefits against him. Whether he'd tried to do so as a means to usurp her position as the Dark Lord's favorite or was really a traitor mattered not; he was about to fail spectacularly in either.

"Potter, murder Longbottom and Weasley with the Fire-Making Spell. I feel like witnessing a real witch-burning." There was no reason to speak the command out loud of course, but how would the witnesses be suitably horrified if she did not? Cackling for all she was worth, she turned back to Snape. "See, old friend? I do not need to kill the Boy-Who-Lived to remove the Light's savior. Burning his friends to death will either wake up such hatred within him that he will embrace the darkness to take revenge, or wallow in self-pity and dread of his own magic and diminish into a near-squib. If the trauma does not send him into insanity first."

What would Snape do, Bella wondered. He wasn't in a position to stop her, outnumbered as he was. Were he truly loyal to the Dark Lord, he'd simply sit back and enjoy Potter's torment. Were he out for his own gain, he'd try and fail to turn this into his advantage. Were he a traitor... well. Bella still needed to find the Dark Lord, didn't she? A bit of anthropomancy would make that task so much easier.

 _"Reducto!"_

 _"Reducto!"_

Two silver-blue bolts lanced out towards Bella, totally ruining her plan and worse, her mood. She'd been prepared for treachery so a nonverbal shield readily deflected the double attack but to her great surprise, the curses had not come from Snape. Her fellow Death Eaters were even more blindsided by the unexpected attack, Dolohov narrowly dodging a deflected silver-blue bolt that went on to disintegrate a Merman's leg from the knee down, Rodolphus sacrificing his off-hand to avoid getting a hole through his torso. Still shocked but rapidly growing angry, Bella raised her wand against her attackers while mentally reaching out towards her Imperiused minions...

 **...**

Neville Longbottom was scared.

No, no he wasn't; he was absolutely terrified. One moment he and his friends were led back to the castle by Professor Snape with all they'd set out to do that night accomplished, the next they'd stumbled upon the vile witch and wizards that had destroyed Neville's family. The deranged Bellatrix Lestrange had come out of the cold dark waters of the Black Lake believing Professor Snape to be a fellow Death Eater and to Neville's ever-increasing dread, the Professor had not denied it. Not that he should have with four dangerous murderers in his face, but after all Pettigrew had told them about the War, and spies, and traitors, Neville had been left doubtful and uncertain. So what else was new? Oh yeah; a mad witch had just magically commanded one of Neville's best friends to burn him alive. He had totally frozen upon hearing that mad cackle right out of his earliest nightmares and had yet to react as Harry raised his wand to... to...

Neville remembered his parents, as he always did when he was really scared. His dad, lying in his bed in St. Mungo's totally unresponsive. His mum, giving discarded wrappings of small sweets to him and him alone because that was the only way she could tell him she recognized him. Both of them screaming until they could do so no more; a memory indelibly burned into Neville's mind before his second birthday. As Harry's wand shook in his hand, as the mad witch cackled yet again and the sightless eyes of a hundred Merpeople gleamed dully in the moonlight, Neville was still scared... but he was also angry.

Any moment now, he and his friends would die. Either at the hands of each other, or at the end of a Merman's spear or a Death Eater's curse. Neville glared at the smirking madwoman, wishing nothing more than to smash that face of sharp angles, too-large eyes, and Azkaban-wasted beauty. Bellatrix Lestrange paid no attention to him, too busy gloating and keeping an eye on Professor Snape. She didn't notice the massive dog that was Sirius Black biting at the ropes that bound him, either. But even the falsely convicted man getting free wouldn't help Neville at all; by the time he was unbound, Neville would be a charred corpse and Harry... Harry would never forgive himself...

...except he didn't have to. Neville's eyes widened when Harry gasped, stopped shaking, and nodded at him despite their grim situation. With his back turned to the Death Eaters, the other boy mouthed the incantation to a curse, and Neville realized his friend had fought off the Imperius Curse! His fear seemed to ebb away, anger and hope growing inside him as Daphne blinked, and imperceptibly nodded as well. Determination strengthening into a tower of iron will, Neville was ready when Harry gave the signal. As one, the two of them hurled their best reductor curses against the bitch.

Perhaps if all six of them had worked together they might have overpowered Bellatrix, though Neville doubted it. As it was, they still caught the Death Eaters by surprise and caught enough chaos to maybe, just maybe, survive this. Instead of joining them, Neville saw Daphne use the Severing Charm from the corner of his eye, freeing Sirius Black. In an instant, the dog had reverted to a man, vanished the ropes binding the young adult woman they'd found in the Shrieking Shack and thrown a wand at her.

 _"Avada Kedavra!"_

The Death Eater who'd just lost a hand to Neville's reductor curse retaliated wildly, the sickly green flash of the Killing Curse rushing like some malevolent wind through the night but coming nowhere near Neville or Harry. Tracey's terrified shriek was very loud as she tried to dodge and slipped in the muddy ground, vanishing from sight a moment later as she cast the best Disillusionment Charm Neville had ever seen her manage.

 _"Viscera Expulso!"_

 _"Reducto!"_

 _"Protego Maxima!"_

 _"Crucio! Crucio! Crucio!"_

 _"Wingardium Leviosa!"_

Neville had no idea what the sickly brown curse Bellatrix cast his way was and as he had no desire to find out he would be eternally grateful to Professor Snape for stopping it. One of the unwounded Death Eaters dodged Harry's next reductor curse and countered with a torrent of blood-red Cruciatus curses. Harry fell down screaming, the young woman with Sirius Black narrowly dodged the second, and then Ron Weasley's levitated mass of mud swallowed the third on its way to bury the fourth enemy man. It was casually deflected and then the exchange of spellfire reached a pace Neville could no longer follow as two more adults joined the fight.

"Kill them all!" Bellatrix Lestrange shouted in glee as she furiously dueled Professor Snape. Dozens of Merpeople raised their spears, and Neville gulped.

 **...**

When the Unforgivables started flying, Valeria did the smart thing; she fell to the ground to avoid the barrage, then called for reinforcements. A quick banisher hurled Daphne out of the way of a pale grey bolt that might or might not have been an Organ-Rotting Curse, and a summoning charm on Ron's robes pulled the redhead out of the way of a Piercer that would have cored him like an apple. Not even fifteen seconds into the fight and they were barely hanging on. Deciding that her position in the rear gave her an opportunity they couldn't afford to miss, Valeria jumped up and threw as much magic as she could into her next spell.

 _"Lumos Maxima!"_

Living in the cold, lightless depths of the Black Lake, the Merpeople wouldn't have much tolerance for bright lights. Living in the cold, lightless depths of Azkaban and having been forced to act mostly at night, the Death Eaters had a similar, if less pronounced, weakness. Valeria's rendition of a fifty-kilowatt beacon left all of them momentarily reeling without affecting her friends, since all of them had their backs to her. Unfortunately, she got a dozen spears thrown at her for her troubles. Fortunately, most bounced against her hasty shield, and only one bit into her thigh.

"Fucking Ow!"

 _"Obliviate!"_

Under cover of a fairly good Disillusionment Charm, Tracey had snuck up to the Death Eater that had almost killed her and attempted to tear apart his mind by using the Memory Charm as a hammer. She'd even timed the spell to coincide with Hestia Jones' attack on the fellow, but his shield proved simply too strong. Only the barest traces of magic pierced it despite the elder witch's continuous onslaught and the memory charm only disoriented him for a moment. He got back into the fight with a vengeance, pushing both his opponents back.

 _"Torqueo!"_

She rolled aside as quickly as she could to avoid the pale pink curse hurled her way, but wasn't fast enough. It smashed through her shield and hit her in the same leg the Merman's spear had wounded. Suddenly, every single muscle in the limb in question seized up as if by a cramp, and she toppled. Bastard. At least it had been weakened by her shield and had not hit her torso. Experiencing a heart attack was not her cup of tea.

 _"Torqueo!"_

 _"Reducto!"_

What kind of self-respecting dark wizard used pink curses anyway? At least Harry had dodged and answered with a reductor, followed by the same from Neville, Ron, and Daphne. It would have been very embarassing to be taken out by such a sissy, fairy curse.

 _"Avada Kedavra!"_

Bellatrix Lestrange had just tried to murder her Head of House. What the bloody hell was Valeria thinking, rolling on the muddy ground and not helping? Was this what shock felt like? She found she didn't much like it; it cramped her style. Maybe she had to do something about it before the Merpeople recovered and rushed them. She really didn't want to die like her brother's elf wizard character, stabbed in the back by a kobold. Thus she put all of her fear, her anger, and her desire to gleefully apply the threefold law to everyone that hurt her or her friends into her next spell.

 _"Confringo!"_

 **...**

Daphne jumped to her feet despite her aching bones, runny eyes, tortured ears, and a skull that was being compressed by an invisible vise. To stand still was to die, as her father had always said. Besides, she really wanted to see what had hurled her off her feet, along with everyone else. Professor Snape seemed intact, if a bit stunned, and so did that bitch Lestrange, which was nothing short of a miracle, considering both of them had stood where the crater now was. The thirty feet wide, six feet deep crater still smoking as it filled with lakewater.

There was a reason that version of the Blasting Curse was rarely used in Dueling at full power; both sides were lucky to be alive. Pettigrew had been at the edge of the fighting, unconscious and flat on the ground. While unshielded, he'd only been thrown a couple dozen feet away. Ron, Harry, Neville, and Tracey were all shocked and a bit beaten up despite being outside the main blast, too. Sirius Black and his girlfriend (Daphne was pretty sure that's what she was, unless she was his toy) were a bit bloody, as were the three male Death Eaters. Worse off were the Merpeople. All of them had been hurled back into the lake by the explosion like so many rag dolls. If it weren't for their kind adapting to the high pressures in the depths of the sea they'd have been torn to pieces, much like those twelve muggles had... when Peter Pettigrew had used the same curse... to cover his escape. Morgana's tits, what had Campbell done now?! So irresponsible... so stupid... having that disgusting rat teaching her... If they both survived this, she'd give the other girl a tongue-lashing, and a real lashing, she'd never forget.

 _"Avada Kedavra!"_

The shouted Killing Curse shocked Daphne out of her rage at her friend's idiocy but she was too far from Harry and too dazed by the explosion to do anything about it.

...

Harry must have narrowly escaped death a dozen times over in the brief, intense, horrible fight for their lives he, his friends, Professor Snape, his Godfather, and a witch they'd once met (and stunned) in St. Mungo's were in. At least being skewered at the tip of a Merman's spear was no longer an option, after someone had tried to blow everyone up. Luckily, all of them were still alive and standing, even if Valeria had to lean against Neville and everyone else was at least somewhat battered. Now if only...

 _"Avada Kedavra!"_

Still a bit numb by the explosion, he failed to dodge in time as the neon-green bolt of Bellatrix's Killing Curse came at him with the sound of something vast and terrible flying through the air. He braced for death... but it never came, the curse splashing ineffectually only a few feet from his face. Everyone, Death Eater, Professor, and student, looked on with shock.

 _"Avada Kedavra! Avada Kedavra!"_

Two more green bolts, one towards Harry, the other towards Neville, both stopped in mid-flight. Now several of the adults in both sides were gaping at him. Harry was not far behind. If he'd done anything to stop them, he'd no idea what. _"Primary sign of insanity"_ he heard one of the girls whisper behind him. _"Repeating something and expecting different results."_ He didn't know who had spoken but he wished they hadn't clued in the crazy terrorists on that little tidbit. Because they seemed to be regrouping.

"No matter." Bellatrix Lestrange said with a scowl. "Concentrate Blasting Curses on the brats; they can obviously be hurt by them and the blood-traitors can't cast enough shields against all of us."

That was when a huge, poweful, and really angry canine slammed against the rearmost Death Eater. It was larger, paler, and more wild-looking than Sirius' form... and seemed to believe evil wizards were an appropriate prey animal. It bit down on the man's arm too fast to see, leaving behind mangled flesh and snapped bones. Then it leaped at its second victim, who'd panicked and started hurling curses at it. Red, yellow, and silver bolts splashed against the beast's hide, burning it in places but causing no serious wound. With a double-swipe of its seriously clawed forelegs, the beast gutted the second Death Eater even as it dodged Killing Curses from both Bellatrix and the other remaining Death Eater, and Harry understood why most evil witches and wizards didn't rely solely on the one unblockable attack that almost always killed; it was slow. Or at least slower than other spells; they always had to shout it out and by the time they had uttered the two-word incantation, the beast had already moved.

Finally, Bellatrix landed a hit with the Cruciatus, quickly followed by a far more controlled blasting curse and the beast was hurled thirty or forty feet back to land with a pained howl and not get up. It was stirring feebly and the mad witch was about to kill it when Professor Snape and Sirius Black unleashed a barrage of curses at her and her sole remaining companion. Realizing the damage had already been done, the two murdering minions of Voldemort retreated into the water.

"Until we meet again, Snape, Siri!" She cackled, deflecting most of their attacks easily. Harry shivered as her insane laughter echoed in the night, chilling him and the others to his soul. He remembered hearing a cruel laugh just like it, that day his entire fate was set in stone and his family destroyed. "Enjoy the companion of your other guests, since you didn't mine." And with that parting shot, Bellatrix vanished into the Black Lake along with her companion. Harry shivered again, comparing this new horrible experience with all the times he'd met Voldemort. The mad witch was more human - but even scarier for being so.

"Come here, Potter." Snape growled, casting hasty healing spells on everyone else. "How far did you progress in your lessons with Lupin?"

"Far enough." He said, suddenly too cold, and hungry, and just tired for words. "Why does it matter? We won. We're still alive!"

"It matters, Potter, because this little fight did not remain unobserved." The Potions Master snarled, shaking just as much as Harry and his usually sharp manner far more solemn and, dare he think it? Almost fearful. "And as Bellatrix said, we have guests." He pointed all around them and didn't wait for Harry to understand. He raised his wand and cast.

 _"Expecto Patronum!"_

A bright silver doe manifested, cantering in a tight circle around their group. Professor Snape's Patronus was far brighter and more clearly defined than Harry had ever managed and in its light Harry saw what Bellatrix had meant when she talked about entertaining guests. Dozens upon dozens of black-robed figures floated closer and closer, the unearthly cold Harry had not noticed during his adrenaline high becoming piercing now, accompanied by wave after wave of despair.

 _"Expecto Patronum!"_

 _"Expecto Patronum!"_

A huge silver dog and a graceful swan joined Professor Snape's doe, but they were barely brighter than Harry's attempts and already fading under the Dementors' influence. Sirius shuddered and collapsed, sobbing and pleading, while the wolf-beast whined pitifully and tried to crawl away. Neville and Tracey were shaking too, now, and Daphne and Valeria were pale. The two blonde girls were trying to cast the Charm too, but Daphne only got a few whisps of mist and Val got puffs of black smoke darker than the now starless and moonless night around them. In the distance, the wolf-beast seemed to melt but Harry had far bigger problems than a strange magical transformation.

He was already fighting his most horrible memories when Valeria stumbled into him, shaking his arm and trying to shout something but her voice seemed to have been stolen away by the horrors now kept at bay only by Professor Snape's withering silver doe. In moments it would be gone... and they would all be worse than dead. Harry would have liked to believe he'd be seeing his mom again, but that was a foolish hope. Without the soul, how could there be an afterlife? His hands fell to his sides on their own accord, his wand almost falling from his fingers as they bumped against his purse... and then he remembered.

With one last shred of hope, he frantically took out the large vial that shone like liquid daylight and drank it all in one gulp. Warmth, energy, a torrent of giddy happiness burst through him, fighting the supernatural cold and dread of the Dementors and leaving him to think clearly for the first time since this horrible night had started.

 _"Expecto Patronum!"_

With all that overwhelming euphoria coursing through every inch of his body, recalling all his best and brightest memories was easy. A silver stag as bright as the sun burst forth from his wand and charged the mass of Dementors like a missile, scattering them into the night. Harry started laughing as loudly as he could because... why not? Everything was great! He'd survived another horrible but exhilarating adventure, captured a traitor, would soon reveal Sirius' innocence for all to see and go live with him for the summer.

He was still laughing hysterically when a terrified Minerva McGonagal found him fifteen minutes later.

 **...**

"...to be reasonable, Cornelius!" Someone was shouting and really messing up Valeria's beauty sleep. "You cannot condemn an innocent man!"

"Innocent?" Another familiar, more high-pitched voice argued shrilly. "Several people were almost slain, Dumbledore! How can you possibly suggest we let such a dangerous..."

"Gentlemen, this argument is getting us nowhere." An oily and far less pleasant voice pronounced. "Perhaps we should leave the students to their recovery and continue this... discussion in a more appropriate location?" There was a sigh, a derisive snort, and a sharp, angry hiss that she didn't quite catch. "...don't understand why you are interfering in this, Dumbledore. The Minister has already decided that vile... individual is too dangerous to let live. Overturning the Minister's decisions and ussurping his authority is not within your sphere of responsibilities, is it?"

A door banged closed and the argument was cut off. Valeria opened her eyes and found herself in a room with white walls, marble floor, white-sheeted and overly clean beds where her other friends lay, still unconscious. The hospital wing, then. A rather furious Madam Pomfrey running up to her would have confirmed it readily enough, if the smell of antiseptic and medical potions had not already done so.

"I'm sorry, child. Those arguing... men came and woke you up before I could give you another dose of sleeping potion." She fussed over her and pressed her back into her bed. "Not to worry, another dose should do the trick."

"Madam Pomfrey, what time is it?" She asked fearfully, noting the gleam of a new dawn approaching through the windows. "How long have I been asleep?"

"Only two and a half hours, unfortunately." The Matron said with a scowl. "Physical damage, curse wounds, Dementor exposure; you were under too many different healing potions to risk a larger dose of Dreamless Sleep, I'm afraid."

"And the others?" She asked, even more worriedly now. Two and a half hours... that meant... she had to get out of there outright!

"Mister Potter was the worst off; some sort of magical hysteria. Professor Snape said he'd make a full recovery in a day or two." The mediwitch huffed and shook her head, obviously affronted that he had to rely on anyone else for her patients' needs. "The others are about as well as you are, except they didn't have a resistance to the sleeping potion. What have you been up to, young lady? I had to give you three times the normal amount just to put you under."

Huh... her magically controlling her sleeping schedule over the year must have had more side effects she was not aware of. While interesting, that was hardly of importance however - and time was of the essence. Fortunately, Madam Pomfrey had confiscated neither her Time-Turner nor her wand. Maybe she didn't even know what the strange amulet did.

"What about Professor Lupin? Sirius Black? Peter Pettigrew?" That was information she really needed before going out.

"Black is... recovering." The mediwitch's face twisted as if she'd bit into a lemon. "If one can ever say that about prolonged Dementor exposure. He's been sent to St. Mungo's of course. The Death Eater must be in a Ministry cell by now; Professor Snape shouted and cursed at everyone until it was done despite Lucius Malfoy's not so subtle urgings to the contrary." Madam Pomfrey smirked for a moment, then scowled. Her eyes were not angry though; they were sad. "As for Mister Lupin... the Minister will be giving the order for the Kiss come morning."

"WHAT!"

"Oh yes, a tragedy. Dumbledore was trying to change his mind - you heard them arguing about it." She sighed in defeat. "Seven years I cared for that boy and now that idiot Fudge is going to have him killed - worse than killed!"

"But...but why! Professor Lupin helped us! He mauled two Death Eaters in his wolf form and saved our lives!"

"You're too young to grasp Pureblood politics, child." Somehow, Valeria doubted that. "Suffice it to say, Lucius Malfoy wanted revenge against the man that ruined two of his former mates and the Minister is too much of a bigot and an idiot. He actually agrees with him! But enough of this." She handed over a vial of potion to Valeria. "Drink all of this and you should be sleeping in a minute or two."

As the Matron turned around, Valeria hit her with a Stunner in the back. Then she jumped off her bed, levitated Madam Pomfrey into an upright position, put her in a Body-Bind and started searching through her purse for some Forgetfulness Potion. Tracey was the only one of their group who'd managed the Memory Charm and she didn't want to damage the mediwitch's mind with a botched casting. Then Valeria put the standard array of secrecy spells on herself and dashed out of the Infirmary.

In addition to sending her future self's letter back in time to keep the chain of Reversals intact, she had to check on any additional messages that might help her save Professor Lupin. She was the one to bring him into the fight on her future self's advice and it would be poor repayment if he lost his soul after having saved everyone's lives.

 **...**

Ten minutes later and after having checked all the secret places around the castle her future self might have used to hide a message after a Reversal of Time, an exhausted Valeria almost collapsed in the second-floor bathroom. Not only had she found nothing extra, but there was no future letter to carry into the past in continuation of the chain; she'd reached the point her future self had initially written it.

Now she had to write it herself, as well as make all the other decisions without any help or information from the future...


	77. Are gauged by what you have to do

**Last chapter of actual story for this book, guys and gals. See you in the first chapter of 'The Hogwarts Six And The Darkest Wizard' in a few days' time.**

 **a1993: Not exactly what I meant, but that too.**

 **Urazz: I didn't say Harry would be the main character; I said we'll be getting other people's PoVs more often, especially Harry. A good third to half of the book will still be Valeria. On the other hand, the next book is considerably larger, so everyone's PoVs will be more developed. If anyone wants to suggest PoVs they want to see, feel free to do so. As for why Val is doing this on her own, read on; it's fairly clear.**

 **lightning king: Lupin still has self-esteem issues though. Unless he overcomes them, he'll still be the same initiative-crippled man that didn't try to find out anything about Harry for over a decade in canon. For our six heroes, I hope their skills and specialties are already showing through some. They'll eventually grow to be very different witches and wizards. For example Tracey is a prodigy in Mind Magic and Care of Magical Creatures and Harry is a prodigy in Dueling and Flying and is fairly good in Transfiguration and Charms. I actually have a chart with all their talents, in case you're interested. Now, as far as powerful, illegal, dark magic is concerned, we'll be seeing more of it. The second book covers years 4-6 and there are lots of shenanigans to be carried out and geographical features to be rearranged. Last but not least, I've read Santi's story and I'd love to read more of it. His talking about intent/will behind magic is one of the best I've seen and his Grindelwald is awesome (I hope my own will be just as cool). Charms are one of Val's greatest talents, seeing as she's already doing enchantments. She actually enchanted her room in Slytherin with defenses, as well as the classroom the six appropriated for their training/experiments; she just never bothered with comfort. She spends too much time doing illegal stuff and running away from / towards dark wizards to have time for it.**

 **Renata MM: In canon, Harry resisted the Imperius in September of his 4th year with only the incentive of not being made a fool of in class. Here, he resists the Imperius three months early, but with the motivation of not murdering his friends. His resistance is due to his extremely high willpower, honed after a lifetime of hardship. The Horcrux is actually working against him in this, opening his mind to external intrusion. Without it, Harry would probably be very good in Mind Magic, or at least the blunt, forceful uses of it.**

 **Everyone: You guys sure are bloodthirsty when it comes to Fudge, huh? Hopefully this will satisfy you. Or horrify you, as the case may be. Val is not exactly a good person.**

 **...**

One of the failures of the Marauder's Map was that it could only reveal people in areas shown upon it. While this seemed a no-brainer at first glance, it became a rather serious fault when one considered space expansion charms, tunnels and chambers its creators had not discovered, and any changes to the castle after its creation. Another failure was that it only showed sentient, living beings. Since Valeria needed to move rapidly around the castle with nobody, not even her past self, the wiser, the answer was rather simple.

First, she borrowed Daphne's purse and Disillusioned it. The Greengrass scion had spared no expense on her wardrobe and personal items, and the undetectable expansion charms on the pearl-studded, silver-lined velvet pouch were far better than those on Val's much cheaper model; she actually fit inside. Then, she instructed one of her newest minions through the same improvised communication link she'd used with the rat inferi to pick up the pouch and carry it to the various destinations she had to visit. The flight definitely wasn't first class but as a means to move around Hogwarts it was faster and more maneuverable than anything except having Dobby port her around - and using the House Elf would defeat her attempts at secrecy.

All of Valeria's earlier attempts at an airborne scout had not been very successful. Insects crumbled to dust at the infusion of any necromantic magic, and avians lost their feathers much like mammals lost their hair. Enchanting landbound inferi to fly could be done, but the results were both funny and sad. Normal animation and Necromancy didn't mix well; the test rat had gained decidedly bludger-like tendencies along with a total lack of targeting control. She'd had to thoroughly scourgify the test area after it had beaten itself to a pulp against the walls. But the three bats had worked out perfectly. Already stealthier than birds, they were all but undetectable after being disillusioned and silenced. They could also scan enormous areas overnight thanks to their flight and the tirelessness of the dead, which was how she'd found out Sirius Black's hideout, and as inferi they were invulnerable to the majority of charms or curses most witches and wizards used in a fight. Too bad she couldn't gloat about that to either side of the war. In the interest of not being sent to Azkaban by Dumbledore or being forcibly recruited by the Dark Wanker, it was better to let everyone believe Harry was responsible for the blocked Killing Curses.

The entire castle being open to her stealthy intrusions and more than one life hanging in the balance, the young Slytherin witch gave the hourglass amulet hanging from her neck exactly five turns.

 **...**

"Are you sure about this, Lucius?" The Minister of Magic said a bit uncertainly, fiddling with his green bowler hat. Not that he was truly uncertain; he just wanted to get one more concession of political support from the other man.

"Of course." Lord Malfoy said with dignity and determination, while inwardly gloating at managing such a maneuver and sneering at Fudge's stupidity. "If Sirius Black, long believed to be a mass murderer and You-Know-Who's right hand, is indeed innocent how can we be certain everyone else convicted by the previous administration is not so as well?" He paused, waiting for the shorter-legged man to catch up as they walked through the castle's dark corridors, dozens of portraits pretending to be asleep while shamelessly spying on them for the old goat. Lucius didn't mind word of what he discussed with the Minister reaching Dumbledore at all. After all, one couldn't gloat properly if their opponents didn't realize the magnitude of their failures. "Personally I really do not trust Barty Crouch at all, especially not in this matter. Merlin, the man sent his own son to Azkaban! He either condemned his innocent heir to the worst death imaginable, or sacrificed him to cover himself for how could a youth barely graduated from Hogwarts become a Death Eater without his father being aware. And his legalization of the Unforgivables was even worse; how many pillars of our society were murdered without a trial - in the streets, even!

"Amelia Bones won't like it." Fudge stated, finally convinced. "I'm certain she'll oppose any motion to reduce sentences or lift restrictions and fines on any of You-Know-Who's supposed supporters on that basis, and she's the Head of the DMLE."

"True, but you're the Minister." Lucius said, playing on Fudge's rather enormous pride. "You have the superior authority and, if I might, superior support as well."

"Excellent." Cornelius Fudge agreed to what Lucius was not quite openly proposing with a nod. The Malfoys and their allies had helped him take the position of Minister when Dumbledore had refused the position at the end of the war and Crouch had commited political suicide and since then many of the old Pureblood houses had become Fudge's staunch supporters. Under his guidance, a Ministry almost destroyed during the war had been rebuilt on a foundation of old traditions and spearheading Pureblood interests ensuring that if such a civil war did happen again in the distant future, the Ministry would never again be divided, or weak. The only reactionary, muggle-loving holdouts in the government of magical Britain had been limited to Weasley, Bones, Ogden, Marchbanks, and a good percentage of Aurors. With the sacking of that lunatic Moody this year and the limitation of new recruits over the past few years the latter problem would eventually solve itself. Odgen and Marchbanks wouldn't live forever, though the ancient Professor and Head of the WEA was making a decent attempt at it, Weasley was too eccentric to avoid the sack for much longer despite his vast network of contacts, and Bones was only one voice.

"Well Lucius, I think I must take my leave." Cornelius smiled. "My undersecretary was already drafting new anti-werewolf laws and she tends to get a bit too excitable about halfbreeds. If she hears about this when I'm not there, she might do something unfortunate." Malfoy did not believe so. Dolores Umbridge might project a mask of simpering idiocy but Dolores Selwyn, bastard child of Lord Selwyn and half-sister to one of the Dark Lord's most dangerous Death Eaters could be a right subtle bitch. Her efforts towards Pureblood supremacy in the Ministry had paralleled and mutually helped his own, one of her best skills being managing Fudge himself. Why, the idiot believed all his ideas were his own when more than half had been spoon-fed to him by others.

"I see." Lucius finally said, declining to comment any further. "I must remain behind for now, I am afraid. You know how Dumbledore is; he has already covered two major incidents in the last few years alone. He cannot be allowed to do the same with this one."

"Doesn't he have the authority to remove you from the castle?" Fudge asked, a bit worried about the political fallout of his friend and ally being forcibly and very visibly thus banished. "You're no longer on the Board of Governors, Lucius."

"No, but I am a concerned parent." The imposing blond man smirked nastily. "A parent whose son and friends has been taught by a dangerous beast for a year. What stories of his brutality they'd have to share, I wonder. Why, he had many of the students face a Boggart in class, openly revealing their worst fears for his own perverse amusement."

"Ah, I see." Fudge nodded solemnly and touched his hat in farewell. "I wish you luck, Lucius." And with that the two men went their separate ways, Fudge moving towards the gates and the Apparition point since the castle was still in lockdown and the fireplaces unusable. He had just exited the main entrance when something bit him.

"Bloody hell!" Drawing his wand in fear and anger for the first time since he'd worked for the Department of Magical Catastrophies, he cast a strong Shield Charm then stared left and right in the darkness for a sign of his attacker. He was not very good in curses and Dueling in general, but all Fudges had a gift in transfiguration. If a Death Eater showed their ugly mug, he'd transfigure them into gerbils.

Unfortunately for the Minister of Magic, what had seemed like a tiny, nonthreatening bite was anything but. Mere seconds after he'd cast his Shield Charm his knees begun to weaken and his vision to swim. Within a count of ten, he had fallen unconscious and his shield had faded. Less than a minute later, his decision to handle a delicate and politically explosive matter with as few witnesses as possible had sealed his fate.

 **...**

The light of a new dawn could be seen in the East when Remus Lupin finally returned to his human form deep in the Forbidden Forest. Under the massive ancient trees, fog and darkness still lingered and no signs of civilization were allowed to intrude... not even those carried by humans. For Remus Lupin had conclusively proven that night he was very far from human. Collapsing on the ground heedless of the thick, icy mud, he took in several lungfuls of air as he rested from his earlier exertions... and delved down a mental path that would end in torment and self-recrimination.

The worst was that he did not regret his actions. He'd taken his Wolfbane, a potion devised to allow him some humanity during his transformation, then made the conscious decision to become the beast, using a werewolf's strength, speed, cursed bites and claws, and resistance to physical and magical attack against other witches and wizards. As Sirius had always said, an animal with the mind of a man became far more dangerous... and werewolves already were Class-5 monsters. Remus hoped dearly Severus and Dumbledore would cover up his use of Wolfsbane, or claim he'd forgotten to take it. Far better he be blamed for losing control than for someone like Fenrir Greyback to realize the potion they hated and thought civilized werewolves fools to imbibe could fulfil their every desire. How many people could Greyback bite if he retained conscious control even for one night? How much more dangerous could he become if he could safely cooperate with dark wizards during the full Moon? No, far better that Remus Lupin be sacrificed than such nightmare become a reality.

Even so, saving the lives of students had been a worthy cause despite his actions' potential to birth nightmares. He did not even know if the two Death Eaters he'd mauled had survived; werewolf-induced injuries did not heal unless treated with Dittany and silver. Almost all muggles died of blood loss after an attack, as did quite a few wizards, infected or otherwise. But before the lives of Harry and his friends? How could he have chosen otherwise when the Maurauders' Map had appeared in his desk moments before his transformation, showing him the invading Death Eaters sumbling into the children? He'd do it again - a hundred times.

A large envelope fell on Remus Lupin's head, interrupting his self-inflicted torment. Jumping up in surprise, he searched for the owl, the loud pop of an apparition, strained his curse-enhanced hearing and sight to pick up the steps and slight distortion of a Disillusioned courier, the beat of their heart, their carefully controlled breathing... nothing. For a few seconds he wondered whether the envelope was cursed, then decided it didn't matter. Remus Lupin the monster deserved to be cursed, for he'd never be free of the beast inside him. Besides, had the sender wanted him dead, they could have hit him with a curse far more easily than they'd done with a letter. Having nothing else to do and hoping for a brief distraction from his lamentations, he opened and read.

 _Professor Remus Lupin,_

 _The Forbidden Forest,_

 _Hogwarts, Scotland._

 _Congratulations on fending off a Death Eater attack on Hogwarts. Had Bellatrix Lestrange and her minions been allowed free rein of just the grounds, even for a few minutes, the next generation of witches and wizards might have been dealt a terrible blow. Casting uncontrolled Fiendfyre takes only a few moments, after all._

 _But that is not the main reason you have been contacted. Following up some research on the subject, a way has been devised to allow you to perpetually avoid turning into a werewolf ever again, should you so desire. Had the established magical government been willing to cooperate and treat your condition as it should have, implementing this solution would have been easy and immediate. Since they are not, it will require a fair bit of work on your part._

 _First, the 'cure's' main ingredient; location. The author of this letter is highly surprised that attempts to revert an astronomically-influenced curse never included any use of Astronomy. Since werewolves only transform when influenced by the full moon, the simplest solution would be to remove the full moon. Avoiding direct exposure to moonlight is, as you know, effective until the influence becomes strong enough to incite the transformation regardless. But any phenomenon based on the movement of stars and planets does not apply simultaneously all over the Earth. Portkeying to Alaska for example would delay the event for many hours... unless you portkeyed back to Britain again, missing the monthly full Moon entirely._

 _Since international Portkeys are government-controlled and expensive, avoiding the monthly transformation requires alternative means. Appendix A provides detailed maps of a chain of locations less than 700 miles apart through which an enterprising wizard could Apparate to Alaska and back in only a dozen apparitions. All of those locations are outside magical national borders, within which Apparition is tracked. Should you wish to implement this plan of avoiding the full Moon, you will have to familiarize yourself with those locations and then expend a few minutes' worth of effort once a month to reach them._

 _Another issue is entering and exiting national borders, as well as reaching each of those locations for the first time. After considerable research, an answer was found; brooms. Flight via broomstick cannot be specifically tracked and apparating while riding a broom is possible. Since you do not own your own broomstick, a Comet 260 will be provided in the location date given in Appendix B._

 _Last but not least, Appendix C contains a list of all the spells required for arctic survival. The writer of this letter is again surprised that wizards even use winter wear at all when warming charms strong enough to melt a path through snow are within the abilities of a first-year student. The other charts in the list are similarly juvenile, with the most complex being the Summoning Charm (to catch fish and animals for food without hunting) and the Permanent Sticking Charm (to permanently assemble anything without need for mortar, nails, screws, and muggle construction tools)._

 _Now, a word of warning; the Minister of Magic, under the influence of Lucius Malfoy, has decided that you should be given the Kiss. According to further research, he will be unable to announce or otherwise apply that decision but caution is advised. Elements within the Ministry may be against the idea of your continued survival._

 _Yours sincerely, a good friend._

 _PS: this letter will self-destruct after you read it._

 **...**

"...and then Val blew up half the grouds, with us upon it." Daphne was saying to her friend's annoyance.

"Maybe I did and maybe I didn't." Valeria huffed. "How could you even tell? We were all Confunded by Sirius, didn't you hear?"

"Yeah, what's up with that?" Ron asked with a frown. "I'm pretty sure we weren't Confunced by anyone."

"You're always Confunded, Weasley." Tracey retorted, biting down a chocolate frog as the boy in question scowled. Madam Pomfrey had brought them all copious amounts of chocolate to counter Dementor exposute but after everyone had eaten a decent amount, Tracey had hit Harry and Neville with a Tickling Hex and Valeria had summoned all the sweets to their side of the infirmary to prevent the boys from devouring them all before the girls could have more than a bite. Fair portions or spoils of war; justified either way.

"You do realize what we did to Pettigrew was illegal, right?" Daphne said with a smirk.

"Serves him right, the traitorous bastard." Harry said darkly and the tall, willowy girl threw a Honeydukes' chocolate at his head. The assault distracted him, and the crunchy sweetness lightened his mood a bit.

"Yes, it does." Neville added in a solemn voice, without the anger Harry would often display if the matter was brought up. "But we could still be expelled or get a year's worth of detention if it came out, so best not to mention it. Probably why Sirius agreed to cover for us in the first place."

"And the Ministry will be quick to accept it." Daphne nodded sagely. "They'll be eager for anything that'll reduce the reparations they'll have to pay to Mister Black for imprisoning him without a trial. An illegal, immoral, unjustified twelve-year sentence has never happened before that I know of."

Valeria was wondering whether Professor Snape would support their story despite being the one to first propose it - he seemed to hate Harry, after all - when they heard shouts coming from outside the Hospital Wing. Several people were arguing at the top of their voice, and getting closer to Madam Pomfrey's domain to boot; this would not end well.

"Are they insane? They'll wake up the entire castle!" The mediwitch in question said indignantly as she scrambled towards the entrance. Before she could reach it though, the door banged open.

"...I'll see you criminally charged for this, Dumbledore!" Lucius Malfoy shouted as he practically invaded the infirmary in a towering fury.

"That's rather surprising, Lucius." The Headmaster said, following him inside. "After all, you were the last one to have talked to him or seen him before he left, weren't you?"

"Headmaster, what..." Madam Pomfrey started angrily but was immediately silenced when a third person entered the infirmary, this time not under his own power. Cornelius Fudge, the Minister for Magic, did not look well. He was pale and shaking, with dark circles under his eyes and bloodshot eyes. He was also babbling incoherently, and his skin had a greenish tint.

"He's been attacked, Poppy." Albus Dumbledore said, the easy twinkle in his eyes absent. "With what, I do not know."

"You never do, do you?" Lucius Malfoy accused snidely. "What is it this time? Another mythical beast roaming the halls and grounds of the school you are unable to protect?"

"I don't think so, Lucius." The aging wizard sighed. "He showed signs of severe poisoning when Severus and Minerva found him. When the Bezoar Severus forced down his throat did not work, he called me then scrambled to brew his strongest healing potion. I brought Fawkes, who provided his Phoenix tears."

Madam Pomfrey gasped then, and Dumbledore nodded.

"Yes Poppy, it's that bad. He seemed to be getting better, all signs of the poison vanishing along with the rather small bite on his arm. But he didn't recover completely, not even with Severus' help." The Headmaster set the Minister down on one of the empty beds and Madam Pomfrey immediately begun running diagnostic charms. "There are only three poisons which a Bezoar can't cure; Basilisk venom, Manticore poison, and one distilled from Dragon's blood. All three can be cured by Phoenix tears, as can most anything else. The things that can't... off the top of my head, only petrification and prolonged Cruciatus exposure... but this is neither."

While everyone else stared at the Minister's prone form with expressions ranging from wide eyes and gaping jaws to calculating frowns, Valeria stared at the floor to avoid becoming a target of a casual Legilimency attempt. All three of the substances Dumbledore had mentioned could currently be found in or around Hogwarts; the Basilisk corpse in the Chamber, Norberta in what had once been Fluffy's cave, and the Manticore Hagrid was currently using in his Firecrab hybrid experiments. But since she'd been unwilling to kill Fudge, poisoning him had only been meant to quickly damage his health. The real threat was a curse that could not be lifted, one Valeria had had access to since her first-year sojourn in the Forbidden Forest.

Since Dumbledore had been unwilling to take Fudge's place and stop the Death Eaters' control of the Ministry, taking the idiot out in a way that would implicate Malfoy had been the only other solution. So why did Valeria's guts churn like snakes at the thought?

 **...**

The rest of the school year passed smoothly. Sirius Black was sent to St. Mungo's to recover from Dementor exposure along with Fudge. Suspicion fell on Lucius Malfoy, probably because it was Dumbledore's only means to prevent Malfoy from blaming him. Nothing was proven though both the Ministry and the Wizengamot was in an uproar. The latter would convene during the summer to elect a new Minister, Daphne claimed.

Remus Lupin disappeared before the Ministry could apprehend him on trumped up charges. Some Umbridge woman tried to capture him and have the Dementors give him the Kiss, but the DMLE intervened. In the end, he was cleared of all charges in absentia but would probably never find work again in anything that needed the Ministry's permission. In a few short weeks, Valeria would be placing a broomstick bought with some of her illegal poitions profits in the agreed-upon location. She had no idea if he'd accept it.

After the dangers the six of them had faced exams were a joke, at least to Valeria. She did well enough for Outstandings in everything except Care of Magical Creatures and Herbology which included some physical labor, and History of Magic which she didn't care about. She rather enjoyed writing about how Muggles used electricity instead of magic in her Muggle Studies exam, though she doubted Burbage would. One of the examples she'd used was applying electricity for torture and comparing it to the Cruciatus, after all.

"Hey Campbell, you owe me a hundred Galleons!" was the greeting Ron Weasley gave her when they met in the train. The trip on the Hogwarts Express to London had been delayed for over a week due to the chaos in the Ministry and the need to secure the train and tracks against a Death Eater attack, which had given their Professors enough time to hand over their exam results.

"Really?" Daphne said, her head not rising from the latest issue of the Daily Prophet she'd been reading. "You actually got more than 'Acceptable' in anything, Weasley? Color me surprised."

"You Snakes are always surprised when a Lion bites you in the..." Tracey silenced the idiot before his big mouth could get him into trouble. Daphne was all stressed out about meeting with her parents after another year of almost dying, as both Draco Malfoy and her sister Astoria had found out only hours earlier. Luckily, Madam Pomfrey had been able to switch their noses back to their original locations; having them on their backsides made sitting down rather uncomfortable, among other things.

"Here's your money, Ron." Valeria said, throwin a bag full of coins at him. "I hope you're finally learning why studying hard is a good idea. Then again, my father always said I was too much of an optimist."

"What's wrong, Val?" Harry asked, he and Neville joining them in the compartment. "Aren't you excited about summer?" With a deft flick of his wand, he unsilenced his friend, then levitated his and Neville's trunks into place.

"I don't know, Harry. Things are turning worse year after year." It wasn't that, but she couldn't come out and say what was wrong, could she? "How long before the Dark Wanker comes back and tries to kill us all, I wonder."

"I'd be happier if you didn't call him that." Daphne said. "Calling even more attention to yourself is dangerous, Val. Far too many of his supporters are running around these days."

"Yes, I should lay low after helping deny him the Philosopher's Stone, helping Harry get to the Chamber of Secrets so he could kill his Basilisk, and helping stop his escaped servants." She rolled her eyes and returned to her daily spell practice.

"Hey guys, let's talk about something less horrible, hey?" Ron said, changing the subject. "Dad got one of his contacts to get him good tickets for the World Cup finals this summer. Do you want to come? Mum would be extatic with several more mouths to feed."

"I dunno." Harry said. "I mean, I'd love to come, but I got a pretty huge problem to solve. With Sirius in St. Mungo's, where will I live now that the Dursleys' house..."

"Harry!" Daphne interrupted sharply, glancing meaningfully at the other children moving around the trair right out of their compartment.

"...err, inexplicably burned down?" The Boy-Who-Lived finished lamely and Ron and Neville snorted. Valeria facepalmed, Tracey giggled and Daphe's expression turned murderous.

"I won't be able to come either." Tracey said before her friend could explode. "Lord Davis would like his Heiress to be finally acquainted with the family business this summer... or so I am told."

"I think I'll try it just this once." Valeria decided. Convincing her parents wouldn't be very hard as long as it took no more than a day or two. Summers were for the family and she doubted muggles would be welcome in a Ministry-organized anything, let alone the World Cup finals.

"Gran doesn't like Quidditch." Nevile stated glumly as if it explained everything. Maybe it did; many of the older purebloods were rather strict.

"We're all a sorry bunch, aren't we?" She mused and Daphne threw a Stinging Hex at her, which was deflected by her shield. It struck out at Harry and was deflected again, then bounced between all of them until it run out of power. After their recent encounters with dark wizards, none of them were willing to take any chances.

If her friends' new vigilance was enough, only the future would tell.


	78. AN

**The Brightest Witch and the Darkest House is officially complete:** Follow Harry, Ron, Neville, Tracey, Daphne, and Valeria in their continued adventures in the Hogwarts Six and the Darkest Wizard. The first chapter of the sequel has already been posted, new chapters will be posted every 4-5 days during the holidays until my posting speed picks up again in the new year.

 **This story will slowly be revised:** Errors will be fixed, author notes will be moved into reviews or removed outright, and each chapter will be polished up a bit. This will be slow going, as posting new chapters for existing stories will take precedence.


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